In a development that has left medical professionals reaching for the gin and global health bodies reaching for the nearest scapegoat, Bangladesh has confirmed that hundreds of its smallest citizens have shuffled off this mortal coil thanks to a measles outbreak of biblical proportions. The numbers, as they say, are in, and they are not good. Over the past few months, the disease has been working its way through the nation's under-fives like a discount scythe at a toddler convention.
Now, one might imagine that in the Year of Our Lord 2025, we would have this whole 'stop children from dying of a preventable disease' thing sorted. One would be wrong. The outbreak, centred in the Rohingya refugee camps but spilling into the general population, has exposed the usual cocktail of vaccine hesitancy, logistical failures, and the sort of governmental shrugged-shoulders that would make a sloth look proactive.
The World Health Organisation, trotting out its standard 'deeply concerned' sock-puppet, has blamed low vaccination coverage. Well, yes. That is generally how measles works. It is not a mysterious ailment that strikes at random. It is a disease that flourishes in the fertile soil of negligence. The irony is so thick you could carve a totem pole out of it: we have a perfectly good vaccine, a miracle of modern science that costs pennies and lasts a lifetime, and yet we cannot get it into the arms of the children who need it most because of a mix of misinformation, poverty, and the sort of bureaucratic inertia that would make a glacier say 'hurry up'.
Every single death in this outbreak is a carefully orchestrated failure. A symphony of missed opportunities, played on the violins of indifference and the kazoos of administrative incompetence. The parents, wailing at the bedsides of their feverish, rash-covered children, are not to blame. They are the victims of a system that has decided, sub silentio, that some children are simply not worth the effort.
The international community, of course, has pledged support. There will be emergency funding and vaccine drives and photo opportunities with concerned-looking officials clutching packets of oral rehydration salts. But the real solution, the one that involves systemic change and a genuine prioritisation of public health, remains as elusive as a timid badger. We will continue to firefight, rushing from one outbreak to the next, patching the holes in the dam with chewing gum and hope, while the water keeps rising.
Let us be blunt: this is not a natural disaster. It is a man-made tragedy. And until the world decides that the life of a Bangladeshi toddler is worth the same as a Belgian banker's poodle, we will continue to read headlines like this, shaking our heads and tutting over our morning coffee before turning to the sports pages.
The death toll is currently in the hundreds. It will rise. Because it always does. And because, deep down, we have accepted that this is simply the way of things. Which makes us, the comfortable observers, complicit in every single death. Now, if you will excuse me, I have a date with a bottle of Gordon's and a television showing a documentary about something that isn't this. Good day.
