Kabul, 12 March 2025 – Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) teams in Afghanistan have reported a surge in measles patients at three MSF-supported hospitals since January. While measles is endemic in Afghanistan, such a high number of cases so early in the year is cause for alarm.
At least one child in Afghanistan has died from measles every day so far in 2025, according to data MSF staff have collected at the Mazar-i-Sharif Regional Hospital, Herat Regional Hospital, and Boost Provincial Hospital in Helmand. This is almost three times as many deaths as were witnessed during the same period last year.
Community-level rapid and targeted vaccination in the districts most affected by ongoing outbreaks would help reduce the number of measles cases, and in turn free up hospital beds for children with less preventable conditions.
At the three hospitals across Afghanistan where our teams are supporting measles detection and treatment, we have seen 4,799 children suspected of having measles in the first eight weeks of 2025. This includes both complicated measles cases (25 per cent) that require admission to hospital, and less severe cases (75 per cent) requiring outpatient treatment.
At Herat Regional Hospital, MSF has launched an emergency response to the high number of complicated measles cases that we are treating – expanding our measles isolation ward from 11 beds to 60 beds, hiring additional staff, and tapping into emergency medications. There were 664 patients admitted in the first eight weeks of 2025, a 180 per cent increase in the number of cases as compared to 2024.
At Boost Provincial Hospital in Helmand, our team has seen 1,866 suspected measles cases in the first eight weeks of the year, which is a 369 per cent increase in the number of cases as compared to the same period in 2024.
At Mazar-i-Sharif Regional Hospital, MSF has treated 1,499 suspected measles patients so far alongside the Ministry of Public Health, a 35.6 per cent increase in the number of cases as compared to 2024.
“We are dedicating additional resources, but we are already running out of space for patients suffering not just from measles, but seasonal illnesses as well,” says Le Paih.
The measles outbreak is taking its toll on children and parents. It requires collective decisive efforts to implement targeted vaccinations and enable wide access to measles treatment kits.
MSF runs seven projects in Bamyan, Helmand, Herat, Mazar-i-Sharif, Kandahar, Khost and Kunduz, with a particular focus on delivering secondary healthcare services. In 2024, MSF teams provided more than 404,500 emergency room consultations, 245,557 outpatient consultations, admitted 119,349 patients, assisted 45,061 deliveries, and undertook 18,149 surgical interventions. More than 13,030 measles patients were treated, 9,751 children were admitted to inpatient therapeutic feeding centres, and 4,016 children were enrolled in outpatient therapeutic feeding centres.
