“The situation is out of control”, thunders with AFP the pediatrician American infectiologist Paul provides, for whom it is the worst epidemic of measles in the country in “probably 30 years”.
A large -scale Health crisis to which Donald Trump’s Minister of Health, the Robert Kennedy Jr vaccinosceptic, is accused of largely contributing by feeding fears with regard to the vaccine.
Since the beginning of the year, at least 1012 cases have been confirmed through 30 of the 50 American states, that of Texas representing more than 70% cases, according to an assessment carried out by AFP from public data from local ministries.
And three people died, including two young children, in the southwest of the country, epicenter of the epidemic. The latest infantile death in the United States dates back to 2003, three years after measles was officially declared there thanks to vaccination.
Messers causes fever, respiratory symptoms and rashes, and in some cases more serious complications, such as pneumonia and brain inflammation that can cause serious sequelae and death.
To see too | Marijuana consumption would increase the risk of cardiovascular disease
“It is the most contagious infectious disease in the world and it is now spreading like a trail of powder,” alerts Doctor Offit, for whom the extent of the epidemic is largely underestimated.
Vaccine derogations
According to the testimonies of multiple caregivers, “the number of cases in the United States could actually be close to 3,000 or more,” he reports.
Many infected people are not going to see a doctor “for fear of being imposed on a vaccine or even because they do not think they feel bad enough”, explains the pediatrician Tammy Camp to AFP from western Texas, where the majority of cases have been recognized.
A sub-declaration to which is added the recent dismissal of thousands of civil servants from the US Ministry of Health and Drastic Financial Cups complicating diagnostic efforts, points out Mr. Offit.
The epidemic broke out at the end of January in a Texan rural area where a Mennonite religious community lives, an ultra -conservative and little vaccinated population, recalling the previous major epidemic of 2019 – with more than 1,200 cases but no deaths – occurred in Orthodox Jewish communities in New York and New Jersey.
If the measles vaccine is compulsory in the United States, the Americans can in a large part of the country as in Texas, the second most populated state, invoke a religious or other reason to obtain a derogation.
And the use of these vaccine exemptions has continued to increase in recent years, especially since the Pandemic of COVID-19, fueled by a growing distrust of the population with regard to the health authorities and pharmaceutical laboratories.
Alternative remedies
Minister Robert Kennedy Jr. is accused of throwing oil on fire by spreading false information, as when he assured in March on the Fox News channel that the vaccine was “the origin of all the diseases that measles itself causes: encephalitis, blindness, etc. »»
In another government, “he would have been asked to leave his post before other children die,” fulminates Professor Offit.
On the ground, his remarks oscillating between minimization of the severity of the situation, called into question the benefit of vaccination and promotion of alternative remedies such as vitamin A causes a certain confusion, confirms the pediatrician Tammy Camp.
Some of the children she auscultable has symptoms related to excessive vitamin A taking, a supplement that reduces the risk of complication in people with malnutrition but can be dangerous in the event of excess, she explains.
“We see more and more cases of diseases that can be avoided thanks to the vaccines and that will not stop in measles,” she warns, citing the recent resurgence of cases of whooping, another serious infectious disease.
Before the development of a vaccine in the early 1960s, measles killed hundreds of children each year in the United States, and continues to make tens of thousands of deaths around the world.
