For weeks, nine-month-old Mustakim’s parents moved from one hospital to another, borrowing money and abandoning work as they tried to keep their only child alive.
Then came the news they had desperately waited for: their son was well enough to go home.
They returned to their village in Bhairab, Kishoreganj, believing the worst was over.
It was not.
Mustakim’s breathing difficulties returned and rapidly worsened.
His parents rushed him back to Dhaka and admitted him to the Infectious Diseases Hospital in Mohakhali at around 11pm on August 29.
By the following morning, he was dead.
“Mustakim was very healthy before. He had no illness. But after he developed measles symptoms, he never became healthy again,” his father Faisal told Dhaka Tribune.
“We are poor people. We took a loan from a samity at interest to pay for his treatment. We went from one hospital to another. I only wanted my son to stay alive.”
Mustakim’s story is one of the individual tragedies behind a measles outbreak that has claimed more than 1,000 children’s lives in Bangladesh since mid-March.
But statistics cannot capture what those deaths have meant inside homes: weeks beside hospital beds, journeys between districts searching for treatment, wages sacrificed, debts accumulated -- and parents ultimately returning without the children they had fought to save.
24 days in hospital
Faisal earns his living at a brick kiln.
As Mustakim’s illness stretched over weeks, he was unable to work regularly because he and another family member had to remain beside the child.
The family sought treatment at least four hospitals in Bhairab, Kishoreganj and Narsingdi before eventually reaching Dhaka.
Mustakim initially developed cold-like symptoms and breathing complications resembling pneumonia.
His condition deteriorated and symptoms associated with measles subsequently appeared.
At the Infectious Diseases Hospital, he underwent treatment for 24 days.
Then his parents were told he had recovered sufficiently to return home.
“Doctors told us that our son had recovered. So we took him back to our village home in Bhairab,” said his mother, Chadni.
But the child repeatedly fell ill after returning home.
“Last week, his breathing suddenly became much worse. It was almost as if he could not breathe. So we quickly brought him back to the hospital in Dhaka,” she said.
This time, doctors could not save him.
“My son was struggling in front of me, and I could do nothing,” Faisal said.
For Mustakim’s grandmother Fatema Begum, the loss has left a void across the extended family.
“He was the first grandchild among my five children. Our family was full of happiness because of him. Now there is nothing left,” she said.
The family said Mustakim had received a measles vaccine around two months before his death.
Another nine-month-old, another loss
About 10 days earlier, another family had suffered a strikingly similar tragedy.
Nine-month-and-16-day-old Yasin, the first and only child of Mahida Begum and her husband, died on August 20 after weeks of treatment for an illness with symptoms associated with measles.
Yasin initially developed fever, cold and cough. His parents first took him to a village doctor before admitting him to Patuakhali Sadar Hospital for six days when his condition failed to improve.
They later brought him to Dhaka, seeking treatment at a children’s hospital and from a private doctor before eventually admitting him to the Infectious Diseases Hospital.
His mother said doctors initially told the family that Yasin was improving, but his condition repeatedly deteriorated.
On his final night, he was struggling to breathe.
“I told the nurses, and they came to see him. I stayed awake until around 1am. When I woke up at 7am, I saw my son lying stiff on the hospital bed,” Mahida said.
She does not know exactly when during those six hours her child died.
Unlike Mustakim, Yasin had not received a measles vaccine, according to his mother.
“I did not give my son the measles vaccine. I did not know much about this vaccine,” she said.
Grief, and debt
Yasin’s father is a construction labourer who works mainly in concrete casting.
As the child’s treatment continued, the family borrowed from several sources, including loans carrying interest.
“We are in a very difficult situation now. My husband will have to work and repay the loans,” Mahida said.
The same financial burden awaits Mustakim’s family.
Both households spent weeks seeking treatment.
Both lost income while family members remained at hospital. Both borrowed money in an attempt to save their only children.
And both are now left with debts incurred for children they could not bring home alive.
Behind Bangladesh’s rising measles toll, each number represents a story like theirs -- a hospital bed emptied, a family grieving and, for some of the poorest households, debts that will remain long after the funeral.
