Bangladesh is facing the sharp end of the climate crisis, but a robust immunisation system is doing a great deal to blunt the force of post-flooding infection.

Bangladesh, often described as the frontline of the climate crisis, is inundated annually – and this year has been no exception.

Waves of flooding drowned large portions of the country in an extreme monsoon between June and September, with the eastern and south-eastern part of the country recording its worst deluges in 34 years. Some 1.2 million families in the region were trapped for weeks in the flood waters, at heightened risk of a second-order catastrophe: infectious disease.

Even the most robust health system can be knocked off-track by natural disaster. 

But the braced-for major outbreaks didn't materialise. "Usually, pneumonia and measles outbreak take place in the flood-hit areas," immunisation expert Dr Tajul Islam A Bari told VaccinesWork. "This year, such thing didn't happen, as vaccines protected them from diseases."