Directorate General of Health Services
Bangladesh government directorate running the country's disease control, immunisation and outbreak reporting.
The Directorate General of Health Services put Bangladesh's measles toll at 1,030 deaths by 14 September 2026, among 172,720 suspected cases, and its disease-control director promised a further vaccination round within two weeks.
Last refreshed: 4 October 2026
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Mentioned in: Bangladesh: 1,030 die of measles in 2026
Pandemics and BiosecurityBackground
The Directorate General of Health Services (DGHS) is Bangladesh's main public health agency. It sits under the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, is based in Mohakhali, Dhaka, and runs health services across the country, including disease control and immunisation. ECDC relays DGHS figures in its own reports, as it did for the 2026 measles toll.
The 2026 measles epidemic is the sharpest test of its immunisation record. Bangladesh recorded 132 measles cases and no deaths in all of 2025. The gap behind the surge built over four years: second-dose coverage fell from 89% in 2019 to 80.7% in 2023, against the 95% WHO says is needed to stop measles spreading, and the last catch-up campaign ran in the winter of 2020-21.
Vaccine procurement also stalled during the political upheaval of 2024 and 2025, so orders slipped just as the pool of unprotected children was largest.
The directorate's campaign beat its own target
The DGHS campaign that began in April 2026 vaccinated 19.75 million children against a target of 18 million. Deaths kept rising: by 14 September its figures, relayed by ECDC, counted 1,030 measles-related deaths, 100 laboratory-confirmed and 930 suspected.
The youngest children sit outside the campaign's reach. The routine first dose is given at nine months, and at one hospital 86% of 57 children WHO died were younger than 15 months. Halimur Rashid, the directorate's director of disease control, told Al Jazeera that a further round was due within two weeks. Critics, among them the former IEDCR scientist Mushtuq Hussain, say the target itself undercounted eligible children, so the headline coverage figure hides WHO was missed.