Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar blamed falling vaccination rates Tuesday on not just misinformation but also unwarranted satisfaction about the public’s health.
“Vaccines are safe, effective, and lifesaving,” Azar said in an address to the World Health Organization’s World Health Assembly. “But around the world, complacency among the public, coupled with misunderstanding and misinformation, is causing vaccination rates to decline, with tragic results.”
He said the source of widespread doubt about vaccine science was “social media conspiracy groups” in the U.S. that confuse well-meaning parents, but also said misinformation was pervasive on an international scale.
“Misinformation comes from a range of sources,” Azar said. “Insurgent groups in the Democratic Republic of Congo spread misinformation about the Ebola vaccine. Terrorists in Pakistan do the same, preventing children from receiving the polio vaccine.”
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Azar noted that the U.S. has supported vaccine education programs in Nigeria, conducted research on yellow fever vaccines, and addressed the rising number of cases of infectious diseases in Nicolás Maduro’s regime in Venezuela.
HHS has ramped up education programs in an effort to dispel conspiracy theories about vaccinations among hesitant parents, he said.
Still, the rate of measles cases in the U.S. grows every week. As of May 17, the number of cases climbed to 880, an increase of 41 from the previous week, and the highest since 1994. Many states allow exemptions from vaccination mandates for religious or philosophical reasons, but recently some states, such as Washington and Pennsylvania, have moved to tighten them.
The uptick in measles cases has been due in part to Americans traveling internationally and returning to the U.S. from countries that have low vaccination rates, most notably Israel. Many Orthodox Jewish neighborhoods in Brooklyn have seen the sharpest increase in cases, prompting Mayor Bill de Blasio to issue a mandate requiring that all school-age children be vaccinated.
