After an unvaccinated Texas child died from measles this week – the first US death in a decade from the disease – vaccine sceptic Robert F Kennedy Jr, Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary, publicly affirmed that vaccines protect children, but called the decision to vaccinate a personal one.
Writing in Fox News, Kennedy said: “They don’t only protect individual children from measles, but also contribute to community immunity, protecting those who are unable to be vaccinated due to medical reasons”.
Rather than advising parents to ensure their children are vaccinated, Kennedy said the decision to vaccinate “a personal one”.
The West Texas outbreak has grown from a handful of cases to more than 130 across two states.
The child, who was not vaccinated against the disease, died in a children’s hospital, the local health department said.
“We have had so many kids coming in and then obviously we were not prepared, probably,” said Amy Thompson, CEO of Covenant Children’s Hospital in Lubbock, where the child died in what officials said was the fourth week of the outbreak.
At least 124 people have been infected in the region since early February, all but five of them unvaccinated and most of them children, officials said.
An additional nine cases were announced in eastern New Mexico, near the Texas border, where the outbreak has spread to about 10 counties.
Lara Johnson, chief medical officer at the Lubbock hospital, said the children have been treated with supplemental oxygen and high-flow oxygen, medication for high fever and IV fluids.
The last measles death in the United States was in 2015, according to the CDC.
A spokesperson for the Texas Department of Health Services said 18 people were in hospital with the disease, and that the outbreak has hit mostly children and teenagers, with cases originally concentrated in a “close-knit, under-vaccinated” rural community where children are largely home-schooled.
“This will accelerate for a while,” said Dr Peter Hotez, director of the Centre for Vaccine Development at Baylor University, in Waco, Texas, and a frequent target of the anti-vaccine campaign.
He noted that about 20% are hospitalised. “Unfortunately, Texas is the epicentre of it because of our very aggressive anti-vaccine movement,” he said.
Measles was declared eliminated in the United States in 2000, meaning there was no continuous transmission of the disease for a year.
In recent years, federal health officials have attributed some outbreaks to parents refusing to vaccinate their children, Reuters previously reported.
In 2024, there were 285 cases of the disease in the country from 16 outbreaks, up from 59 cases from four outbreaks in 2023.
In his opinion piece this week, Kennedy reminded Americans that “good nutrition remains a best defence against most chronic and infectious illnesses”, reports Health Policy Watch.
While affirming that HHS would ensure vaccines are were readily accessible for those wanting them, he also noted that the US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has recently updated its recommendation supporting “administration of vitamin A under the supervision of a physician for those with mild, moderate, and severe infection”.
Vitamin A has been shown to reduce the risk of death from measles by 87% in children under two-years-old, and reduce the length of time the child suffers from diarrhoea and fever, according to the Cochrane Review.
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Worldwide measles cases almost double in a year
More than half the world faces high measles risk – WHO
Measles immunisation campaign to start in February as cases spread