Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s push to remake the U.S. vaccination program is on hold after a federal judge’s ruling last month, but the health secretary is still using his power to influence which vaccines are given to children in poor countries.
Kennedy says children are getting obsolete vaccines containing dangerous ingredients that the US has long since banned. He is withholding $600 million allocated by Congress for vaccines to put pressure on Gavi, the international humanitarian group that distributes the vaccines.
“Gavi has refused to provide the United States with specific data, studies or detailed accounting of how US funds are used,” Emily Hilliard, senior press secretary at the Department of Health and Human Services, said in a statement to POLITICO.
The US co-founded Gavi a quarter-century ago to get vaccines to the world’s poorest countries, and Congress has long provided a large portion of its budget. But Gavi says it has not received the outstanding money for the current and previous financial years, which constitutes about 15 percent of its budget. The funds will expire on September 30 if the Trump administration does not release them. group offers Vaccines for 20 diseases","Add":{"Target": :"New","Property":(),"url": :"https://www.gavi.org/our-work/vaccine-portfolio","_Identification": :"0000019d-d474-d656-af9f-f47700f20000","_Type": :"33ac701a-72c1-316a-a3a5-13918cf384df"},"_Identification": :"0000019d-d474-d656-af9f-f47700f20001","_Type": :"02ec1f82-5e56-3b8c-af6e-6fc7c8772266"}”>Vaccines for 20 diseasesWhich also includes measles, malaria and polio. 50more than","Add":{"Target": :"New","Property":(),"url": :"https://www.gavi.org/partner-countries/programmatic-policies/eligibility-policy","_Identification": :"0000019d-d474-d656-af9f-f47700f20002","_Type": :"33ac701a-72c1-316a-a3a5-13918cf384df"},"_Identification": :"0000019d-d474-d656-af9f-f47700f20003","_Type": :"02ec1f82-5e56-3b8c-af6e-6fc7c8772266"}”>over 50 Low-income countries around the world.
Gavi’s funding is officially controlled by the State Department, but Kennedy’s influence shows that his skeptical views about vaccines are still influencing government policy. This is despite a Boston federal judge’s ruling last month that most of the changes Kennedy ordered to vaccine policy in the US, including a significant reduction in the number of routinely recommended shots for children, were invalid because they did not follow his department’s own procedures. Kennedy has long believed, disregarding research showing otherwise, that some vaccines have dangerous side effects.
Senate Appropriations Committee Chairwoman Susan Collins (R-Maine) told POLITICO in an email statement that her staff has been in touch with Gavi about U.S. funding and that she plans to send a letter to Secretary of State Marco Rubio, urging him to “move quickly to provide the U.S. contribution to Gavi, consistent with the intent of Congress.”
Collins said Gavi has helped vaccinate more than a billion children in the world’s poorest countries and has purchased more than $12.5 billion of American-made goods and vaccines to achieve that goal.
Gavi advocates say withholding funds will cost children their lives. They also say the vaccines the group uses are safer and better suited to the challenges of vaccinating people in the developing world, where refrigeration systems are poor and it is harder to get boosters to people, compared with vaccines used in the US and other wealthy countries.
Hilliard said Gavi has so far refused to develop a plan to phase out a mercury-based vaccine preservative called thimerosal, which Kennedy believes is likely to cause autism. trump administration has asked Gavi to stop using the vaccines","Add":{"Target": :"New","Property":(),"url": :"https://subscriber.politicopro.com/article/2026/01/us-to-gavi-drop-vaccines-with-preservative-to-regain-funding-00751809","_Identification": :"0000019d-d474-d656-af9f-f47700f30000","_Type": :"33ac701a-72c1-316a-a3a5-13918cf384df"},"_Identification": :"0000019d-d474-d656-af9f-f47700f30001","_Type": :"02ec1f82-5e56-3b8c-af6e-6fc7c8772266"}”>has asked Gavi to stop using the vaccines Which contains preservative.
Kennedy wrote a book in 2014 arguing that the preservative is dangerous, Thimerosal: Let the science speak, And last year it was phased out in the US — where it’s still used in some flu shots.
The Boston judge’s ruling overturned that decision, and found that the Kennedy-appointed panel that advised the change had not been properly appointed.
Given concerns about the safety of thimerosal, the CDC asked vaccine manufacturers toworked with","Add":{"Target": :"New","Property":(),"url": :"https://www.politico.com/news/2025/06/18/vaccines-hhs-kennedy-rfk-thimerosal-mercury-00413199","_Identification": :"0000019d-d474-d656-af9f-f47700f30002","_Type": :"33ac701a-72c1-316a-a3a5-13918cf384df"},"_Identification": :"0000019d-d474-d656-af9f-f47700f30003","_Type": :"02ec1f82-5e56-3b8c-af6e-6fc7c8772266"}”>CDC worked with vaccine manufacturers It was phased out in the US in the 1990s and was largely removed from pediatric vaccines given to Americans by 2001. But the agency has also said the preservative is safe.
Thimerosal is used in several vaccines provided by Gavi, including a shot against five diseases, according to Seth Berkley, the group’s former chief executive. He said many developing countries lack adequate refrigeration to store vials of the single-dose vaccine, which is often used in the US and does not contain thimerosal. But developing countries often use multiple-dose vials, which take up less refrigeration space but contain thimerosal to prevent bacterial infections in some cases.
Without thimerosal shots, “children would be left without vaccines — which is probably what they want — but that would lead to more direct deaths from those diseases,” Berkley said, referencing the commonly held view that Kennedy’s goal is largely to reduce vaccinations.
During testimony before the Senate Appropriations Committee last week, Kennedy cited a separate concern about a vaccine distributed by Gavi to combat three serious bacterial infections – diphtheria, tetanus and pertussis (known as whooping cough). Kennedy said that it had been banned in America because it was causing brain damage.
“They’re still giving it to 161 million African and Asian children a year,” Kennedy said in response to a question from New Hampshire Democrat Jeanne Shaheen. Kennedy said Gavi had told him he did not want to use a new vaccine that Kennedy had said was safe.
While a study conducted in the United Kingdom in the late 1970s linked the shot to permanent brain injury in rare cases, more recent studies have not found evidence of this, According to the World Health Organization. But U.S. turned it off","Add":{"Target": :"New","Property":(),"url": :"https://academic.oup.com/jpids/article-abstract/8/4/334/5359449?redirectedFrom=fulltext","_Identification": :"0000019d-d474-d656-af9f-f47700f30004","_Type": :"33ac701a-72c1-316a-a3a5-13918cf384df"},"_Identification": :"0000019d-d474-d656-af9f-f47700f30005","_Type": :"02ec1f82-5e56-3b8c-af6e-6fc7c8772266"}”>turned it off Amidst those concerns in 1997.
Gavi said in a statement that it continues to use the shot because it offers longer-lasting protection than that offered in the US and other high-income countries. The pill used by Gavi to prevent whooping cough requires a lower dose than that used in the US.
Gavi said in its statement that the vaccine is “safe and effective and is estimated to have saved 40 million lives over the past 50 years.”
Berkley, an American infectious diseases doctor who led Gavi for more than a decade and spoke to POLITICO in his personal capacity, said WHO recommends the shot used by Gavi because it helps prevent whooping cough outbreaks in places where access to health care services is limited and where giving booster shots is logistically more challenging.
But President Donald Trump withdrew from WHO","Add":{"Target": :"New","Property":(),"url": :"https://www.politico.com/news/2026/01/22/who-world-health-organization-trump-tedros-00740545","_Identification": :"0000019d-d474-d656-af9f-f47700f30006","_Type": :"33ac701a-72c1-316a-a3a5-13918cf384df"},"_Identification": :"0000019d-d474-d656-af9f-f47700f30007","_Type": :"02ec1f82-5e56-3b8c-af6e-6fc7c8772266"}”>Trump withdrew from WHOA branch of the United Nations, in January. Trump cited his view that the WHO mismanaged the COVID-19 response as a reason.
Kennedy told Shaheen that his Health Department and the State Department were also concerned that Gavi would divert US funding to WHO. Kennedy said Gavi declined to say whether he would do so. Gavi and WHO are both based in Geneva, Switzerland.
Gavi declined to comment on the issue. “We are continuing our dialogue with the US government and cannot comment further at this stage,” Gavi said in a statement.
Its CEO Sania Nishtar told newswire AFP in an interview on Friday that the decision was due to a lack of US funding, as well as cutbacks from other donors. Gavi’s malaria program has the biggest impactlay down","Add":{"Target": :"New","Property":(),"url": :"https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20260424-children-s-lives-at-risk-from-us-funding-cuts-to-vaccine-alliance-ceo","_Identification": :"0000019d-d474-d656-af9f-f47700f30008","_Type": :"33ac701a-72c1-316a-a3a5-13918cf384df"},"_Identification": :"0000019d-d474-d656-af9f-f47700f30009","_Type": :"02ec1f82-5e56-3b8c-af6e-6fc7c8772266"}”>Gavi’s malaria program was most affected. Gavi has helped Deliver 39 million doses of new malaria vaccine","Add":{"Target": :"New","Property":(),"url": :"https://www.gavi.org/our-work/vaccine-portfolio/malaria","_Identification": :"0000019d-d474-d656-af9f-f47700f3000a","_Type": :"33ac701a-72c1-316a-a3a5-13918cf384df"},"_Identification": :"0000019d-d474-d656-af9f-f47700f3000b","_Type": :"02ec1f82-5e56-3b8c-af6e-6fc7c8772266"}”>Deliver 39 million doses of new malaria vaccine There are 25 African countries where the disease is endemic and is killing mostly children under 5 years of age.
Nishtar estimated that thousands of children would die because of the cuts.
Last year, she traveled to Washington to try persuade the trump administration To maintain funding.
Last week, Shaheen urged Kennedy to appoint someone from his office to work with her office to resolve the dispute.
Kennedy said he would do so.
Its 2027 budget requestIn","Add":{"Target": :"New","Property":(),"url": :"https://www.state.gov/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/FY2027-Department-of-State-Congressional-Budget-Justification-Final-4.20.2026.pdf","_Identification": :"0000019d-d474-d656-af9f-f47700f40000","_Type": :"33ac701a-72c1-316a-a3a5-13918cf384df"},"_Identification": :"0000019d-d474-d656-af9f-f47700f40001","_Type": :"02ec1f82-5e56-3b8c-af6e-6fc7c8772266"}”>In its 2027 budget requestThe State Department said any future funding for Gavi through 2027 is “dependent on the organization making the necessary improvements and meeting certain benchmarks on vaccine safety.”
