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Measles roars back in the US, topping 1,000 cases

Measles roars back in the US, topping 1,000 cases

Yahoo09-05-2025

The United States' measles outbreak has surpassed 1,000 confirmed cases with three deaths so far, state and local data showed Friday, marking a stark resurgence of a vaccine-preventable disease that the nation once declared eliminated.
The surge comes as Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. continues to undermine confidence in the measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccine -- a highly effective shot he has falsely claimed is dangerous and contains fetal debris.
An AFP tally showed there have been at least 1,012 cases since the start of the year, with Texas accounting for more than 70 percent.
A vaccine-skeptical Mennonite Christian community straddling the Texas–New Mexico border has been hit particularly hard.
A federal database maintained by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has lagged behind state and county reporting, as the globally renowned health agency faces deep workforce and budget cuts under President Donald Trump's administration.
North Dakota is the latest state to report an outbreak, with nine cases so far. Around 180 school students have been forced to quarantine at home, according to the North Dakota Monitor.
"This is a virus that's the most contagious infectious disease of mankind and it's now spreading like wildfire," Paul Offit a pediatrician and vaccine expert at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia told AFP.
He warned the true case count could be far higher, as people shy away from seeking medical attention. "Those three deaths equal the total number of deaths from measles in the last 25 years in this country."
The fatalities so far include two young girls in Texas and an adult in New Mexico, all unvaccinated -- making it the deadliest US measles outbreak in decades.
It is also the highest number of cases since 2019, when outbreaks in Orthodox Jewish communities in New York and New Jersey resulted in 1,274 infections but no deaths.
- Vaccine misinformation -
Nationwide immunization rates have been dropping in the United States, fueled by misinformation about vaccines, particularly in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic.
The CDC recommends a 95 percent vaccination rate to maintain herd immunity.
However, measles vaccine coverage among kindergartners has dropped from 95.2 percent in the 2019–2020 school year to 92.7 percent in 2023–2024.
Measles is a highly contagious respiratory virus spread through droplets when an infected person coughs, sneezes or simply breathes.
Known for its characteristic rash, it poses a serious risk to unvaccinated individuals, including infants under 12 months who are not ordinarily eligible for vaccination, and those with weakened immune systems.
Before the measles vaccine's introduction in 1963, it is thought that millions of Americans contracted the disease annually, and several hundred died. While measles was declared eliminated in the US in 2000, outbreaks persist each year.
Susan McLellan, an infectious disease professor at the University of Texas Medical Branch, pushed back against messaging that promotes remedies like Vitamin A -- which has valid but limited uses -- over vaccines.
Kennedy has led that messaging in frequent appearances on Fox News.
"Saying we're going to devote resources to studying therapies instead of enhancing uptake of the vaccine is a profoundly inefficient way of addressing a vaccine-preventable disease," she told AFP.
McLellan added that the crisis reflects broader erosion in public trust in health authorities.
She said it is hard for an individual untrained in statistics to understand measles is a problem if they don't personally see deaths around them. "Believing population-based statistics takes a leap, and that's public health."
ia/bgs

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Global Healthy Living Foundation Says Vaccine Committee Firings Before Respiratory Virus Season Creates High Risk Of Illness In the Chronic Disease Community
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The Department of Health and Human Services' budget request for the 2026 fiscal year consolidates the department's 28 divisions to 15 to make way for a new "institution of public health." The new agency, the Administration for a Healthy America, has a $20.6 billion budget designed to support Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s "Make America Healthy Again" agenda. That includes taking over — and significantly reducing — funds for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's chronic disease and global health centers along with some of the institutes that are currently part of the National Institutes of Health. The Administration for a Healthy America, or AHA, says it will take a "root cause" approach to chronic disease prevention, according to the agency's budget request, released last Friday. 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The agency's infectious disease response, involving surveillance and expert teams sent to the source of an outbreak, is "not something you learn overnight that you can just move around easily without disrupting how effective it is." The budget request also cuts the NIH by about 40% and dissolves agencies including the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration and the Health Resources Service Administration. "The Budget reflects needed reforms to put health care spending on a sustainable fiscal path and proposes policies to Make America Healthy Again," HHS press secretary Emily Hilliard wrote in a statement to CBS News. "The United States remains the sickest developed nation despite spending $4.5 trillion annually on health care, resulting in an exploding debt that poses a critical threat to our country along with worsening health outcomes." Kennedy has repeatedly decried the "childhood chronic disease crisis" in America. 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Nearly 70 organizations, including the American Heart Association and the American Association of Colleges of Nursing, signed a letter to leaders of the House and Senate appropriations committees in mid-May, after an earlier version of the budget was leaked. They expressed their opposition to the budget's elimination of the CDC's chronic disease center. The programs in the center "work with states and territories to prevent disease, detect it early, and manage it effectively," said the letter. Eliminating them "would destabilize public health systems at every level and jeopardize decades of progress." Global health The FY 2026 budget request eliminates the CDC's Global Health Center, and instead allocates $239 million toward global health protection, under the CDC's broader "CDC-Wide Activities" budget line. The Global Health Center spent $711 million in FY 2024. 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