WHO says Trump vaccine shake-up goes against evidence

GENEVA: The World Health Organization warned Wednesday that Donald Trump’s bid to overhaul child vaccination in the United States went against “decades of evidence”.

President Trump signed an order Monday pushing for a rethink of school vaccine mandates and repeating calls for the measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccine to be separated into three separate shots.

His Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr founded an anti-vaccine group and has long promoted a disproven link between the MMR shot and autism.

But WHO director general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said the science is “unequivocal: vaccines — including the MMR vaccine — are safe and do not cause autism.”

“Vaccination policy should be guided by rigorous, independent and transparent review of the best available science, not by political influence,” he warned in a post on X.

He said that the WHO is “concerned that recent changes to US immunisation policy are not aligned with decades of evidence that show when children are most vulnerable to disease.”

Tedros said that “vaccines provide the strongest protection, how many doses are needed, and which vaccines can be given together safely.

“That evidence is reviewed continuously as new data emerge from across the globe.”

The WHO chief also warned that “delaying vaccines or separating doses unnecessarily does not make vaccination safer and can leave children unprotected.”

Medical research has never established any link between autism and vaccination, but sceptics including Health Secretary Kennedy continue to suggest that there might be one.

Kennedy has launched a major review of vaccines, including some that have been in use for decades, overhauled the child vaccination schedule, and cut funding for the development of new vaccines — measures that have been strongly condemned by the medical and scientific community.

US courts earlier this year suspended a shake-up of vaccination policy he had initiated.