The government today launched the nationwide Vitamin A Plus campaign, aiming to provide vitamin A capsules to 2.40 crore children aged between six months and under five years.

Health Minister Sardar Md Sakhawat Husain inaugurated the campaign at the Shaheed Abu Sayed International Conference Center in Dhaka.

The campaign will run from 8:00am to 4:00pm through around 1.20 lakh centres and 500 mobile centres across the country.

The launch comes just two months after the nationwide measles-rubella campaign, conducted in phases in April and May, during which the government set a target of vaccinating 1.82 crore children in the same age group.

The Directorate General of Health Services (DGHS) later reported achieving 103 percent of that target.

However, the rise in the target population within just two months has raised questions among public health experts about the reliability of the government’s child population estimates.

Experts say such a large discrepancy between two nationwide campaigns targeting the same age group suggests weaknesses in population data planning and could affect the effectiveness of public health interventions.

The discrepancy is particularly significant as Bangladesh continues to report around 1,000 new measles infections daily, despite authorities claiming to have exceeded the vaccination target during the measles-rubella drive.