The health authorities have started probing its own low target for measles vaccination of children as they found a "big gap" in the latest vitamin A campaign while five more died of measles-like symptoms.

The Directorate General of Health Services (DGHS) in April this year primarily targeted about 18 million children for vaccination with measles jabs and completed the vitamin A capsule campaign last month after 14 months of break with a targeted coverage of about 24 million children across the country.

Now, following the repeated question of why this big gap between the two campaigns though both jabs were given to children aged between six months and 59 months.

However, the DGHS registered five more casualties attributed to measles-like symptoms on Wednesday taking the total fatalities to 770, including 95 confirmed cases since mid-March.

On the other hand, 920 more suspected and 172 confirmed measles infection cases were recorded, raising the total suspected cases to 114,164 and confirmed infection cases to 13,907.

The concerned bodies in the DGHS are claiming both the targets were prepared on proper data but the authorities are not convinced and have asked to provide evidence and a decision will be taken to cover the excluded children in the measles vaccination campaign.

"We have asked the concerned unit to probe the gap in the target number of children. And, the findings will come in one or two days," DGHS Additional Director General Prof Zahid Raihan told the FE.

There was a "big gap" of 5-6 million between the two campaigns --measles and vitamin A, he added, saying that people involved in preparing the target numbers claimed to have done it properly.

"We will investigate the cause of the gap and take the next course of action on measles vaccination coverage," he continued.

The DGHS also investigated the deaths in measles-like symptoms as they claimed the majority of the cases had not been directly linked to measles. Other health complications or disease were behind those deaths.

The concerned DGHS units are also scrutinising the death records in measles-like symptoms and preparing documents as they believe many of them died mostly of pneumonia.

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