How Rfk Jr. faces the American Senate, questions lingering about the epidemic of measles in Samoi, half of the world away

As American grilled senators Robert F. Kennedy Jr. This week President Trump select Faces the Department of Health and Human Services Sharp questions about his actions in the island nation half of the world.

Kennedy’s visit to Samoi in 2019. He recently caught the fresh attention of his activism history focused on asking the security of security and efficiency Vaccines Against measles – because his journey came just a few months before the devastating the outbreak of measles This took 83 lives, many of whom are young children.

“It was very sad,” said Dr. Take Nasri, Samoa’s Health Chief, CBS News said. “It’s one of those things you don’t want to review again.”

Kennedy He claimed that “he had nothing to do” with the people who resist vaccines.

“I had nothing to do with people who were not vaccinated in Samoi,” he said in interview With the producer of a documentary by Scott Hamilton Kennedy. “I never told anyone not to vaccinate.”

But some of KennedyCritics claim that it bears a measure of liability for outburst and that he used the tragedy to promote false claims of a vaccine. Democrats seized in the episode, even sponsoring advertising calling his visit.

What happened in Samoi?

For years before Kennedy focused on the vaccine issues on Samoi, a small Pacific island state had a low vaccination rate. Medical professionals attributed this to the lack of doctors and nurses, as well as demographic shifts, with more people relocation to cities and beyond social structures that helped promote childhood vaccination. To 2017, Only about half Of the one-year-old Samoan children, they were fully vaccinated-to-far below 95% of the coverage needed to prevent the spread of the community and a high fall than the earlier rates that allegedly reached 90%.

The situation turned tragically in July 2018, when the two nurses were misleading muscle relaxing muscle with a dose of MMR vaccine instead of sterile water, which led to the death of two children. The nurses were charged with murder, and the Government responded by suspending the national vaccination program for 10 months. The vaccination rates for children fell to 31%.

Nasri, former Head of Samoan, told CBS News that the government had fought for the implementation of an effective vaccine program. He said that the wrong resolution of the vaccine and its tragic consequences was “the last straw.”

“That created more hesitation,” Nasri said.

The distrust in the vaccines spread across the island like a virus. Even the prime minister at the time issued a statement On Facebook, he claimed that his grandson had been injured with a vaccine. The temporary vaccination suspension corresponds to growing distrust in modern medicine.

“I would rather treat them at home with old -fashioned herbal remedies than I would take them to see a doctor,” said a mother of local journalists at the time. “Because the children died of these vaccines, I don’t believe any medicines from the hospital.”

Patricia Stinchfield, a nurse and a past president of the National Foundation for Infectious Diseases, said she monitored the Samoan vaccine crisis even before the measles broke out. He says the immunization rates have fallen so low that the situation was a “ticking bomb”.

It was in the midst of that “perfect storm,” Stinchfield said, that Kennedy arrived in Self in the summer of 2019. Kennedy said the purpose of his visit was to install a health control system and that a break of vaccination in 2018 was an opportunity for a natural study of an unvaccinated population. His journey was coordinated by a local advocate against a vaccine known for spreading medical misinformation online.

Dr. Nasri told CBS News to meet Kennedy briefly, but their conversation focused on environmental and vaccine issues.

In August 2019, two months after a visit to Kenendy, an infected passenger from New Zealand arrived at a self -taught, and the deadly measles virus began spreading. The government officially declared an epidemic on October 16, and a month later declared an extraordinary state.

It was not until early December, the Samoan government acknowledged that she was wrong to immunization and launched an aggressive campaign of vaccination, making shots mandatory. Dr. Nasrii said the delayed response may have contributed to the high rates of infection and death. But finally, the country closed for two days to allow health professionals to vaccinate people at home, quickly reaching 90% of coverage.

Hundreds of medical experts from all over the world responded and traveled to self -help to help with vaccination efforts, including governor of Lieutenant Hawaii, now Josh Green rules.

“The Government needed political will, and the international community supported us,” Nasri said.

CBS News visited self -tuned during that answer and met a parent named Paulo Puelu, who said the measles epidemic had been overwhelmed by his family in an instant, Killing three of his five children. Their mother Fa’oso was so upset that she slept at her children’s grave, set up in a family yard towards the Samoan tradition. She told CBS News that she felt it was her only way to be close to them.

Looking back, officials told CBS News to believe that a high number of fatalities for multiple factors, including a wide malnutrition, relying on traditional medicine and overwhelmed by the health system. In rural self, many families share one sleeping area, facilitating the transfer, and almost a quarter of the population lives in poverty, further complicating treatment.

Controversies on Rfk Jr.

Dr. Paul Offit is a vaccine specialist and Ko-Isumator Rotavirus vaccine. He is also the director of the vaccine education center at the Philadelphia Children’s Hospital. He was a frequent critic Kennedy and believes that a candidate for health secretary deserves a sharp verdict on how the outbreak was going.

Offit says Kennedy has announced about two deaths before understanding what happened and blamed the MMR vaccine. When it turned out that this was not the case, Kennedy did not correct that false claim.

“If he was any man, what he was not, he should return to self -taught and apologize to each of the families where the child died,” Offit said. “He is a famous man who goes there and meets with the vaccine activists. He gives them credibility to go there.”

CBS News addressed Kennedy to comment through the organization he led until last month, a children’s health defense and did not get an answer. The group had previously denied that his visit had played any role in the outbreak.

In interviews, Samoan health officials told CBS News to believe Kennedy’s actions are unlikely to directly influence what happened.

“It is well documented that the visit of RFK JNR Samoi in 2019 coincided with increased feelings against vaccines, especially among certain groups,” the Samoa Ministry of Health said. “However, there is no convincing evidence that his visit directly contributed to the fall of vaccination rates or the subsequent epidemic of measles.”

But in the middle of an extraordinary island, Kennedy sent letter Samoan premiere, suggesting that a defective vaccine may be responsible for causing infections – the theory that is revealed.

“It is critical that the Samoan Ministry of Health, scientifically, determines, if the epidemic is caused by inadequate vaccine covering or alternatively, a defective vaccine,” Kennedy wrote in a letter on November 19, 2019. Kennedy’s letter partially relies on the idea that seems to have arisen Disinformation spread widespread on social media during the 2014-2015 measles epidemic in Disneyland, which incorrectly said that measles derived measles were identified.

Stingchfield says it is impossible based on the weakened nature of the virus in the vaccine. In very rare cases, people can show symptoms similar to those associated with measles, but no cases have ever been documented that measles spread as a result.

After Samoan infections, critics say Kennedy diminished the seriousness of the epidemic in blogs and continued to suggest that the vaccine itself was responsible for the high rate of death. He was joined by Del Bigtree, a prominent vaccine activist and Kennedy Ally, in suppressing conspiracy theories about outbreak.

Stiinchfield says the claims they pushed the other inconsistent evidence. And in the end, the Samoan government stopped listening.

Since then, Samoa has achieved high vaccination rates, and the World Health Organization says that the country has not reported on cases of measles since 2020. However, vaccination of the vaccine remains a challenge at a global level and the vaccine activists continue to spread fear and disinformation.

Samoa’s Ministry of Health says that he is still concerned about “the global expansion of the disinformation of the vaccine and the potential consequences of the influence of RFK JNR, especially if he assumes a leading role in public health policy. The spread of the policy against vaccines has already contributed to this outbreak of vaccines that can be prevented In several countries, turning to the efforts of immunization for decades. “

Stingchfield said she believed the misinformation spread Kennedy and others – in Samoi, and during from – remains acutely dangerous.

“Their modus operandi is to take a little core of the truth and spin it and confuse people, to spin it at a time when fear is already so tall,” she said. “It’s disinformation, a weapon that will harm people, harm children.”