The Trump administration is intensifying its campaign against vaccinations, with Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. withdrawing U.S. funding for the world’s preeminent international vaccine organization. The group — known as Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance — is the world’s largest funder of life-saving vaccinations and says it has helped vaccinate more than 1.1 billion children in 78 lower-income countries, preventing nearly 19 million future deaths. Kennedy also recently stacked an important vaccine advisory panel with unqualified appointees, many of them holding anti-vaccine views.
“Anti-vaccine activists have been shouting from the sidelines for decades. Now they’re making policy,” says Dr. Paul Offit, director of the Vaccine Education Center at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia.
This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.