By CHARLOTTE GRAHAM-McLAY
WELLINGTON, New Zealand (AP) — Samoa’s top health official on Monday denounced as “a complete lie” remarks that Robert F. Kennedy Jr. made during his bid to become U.S. health secretary, rejecting his claim that some who died in the country’s 2019 measles epidemic didn’t have the disease.
“We don’t know what was killing them,” Kennedy said during tense U.S. Senate hearings last week on whether he should oversee the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, suggesting that the cause of the 83 deaths — mostly of children under age 5 — was unclear.
“It’s a total fabrication,” Samoa Director-General of Health Dr. Alec Ekeroma told The Associated Press of Kennedy’s comments.
U.S. senators grilled Kennedy last week over his 2019 Samoa trip, accusing him of downplaying his role in the epidemic.
What happened in Samoa?
The outbreak devastated the Pacific island nation in 2019, killing 83 people in a population of 200,000. Vaccination rates were historically low because of poor public health management and the 2018 deaths of two babies whose vaccines were incorrectly prepared, prompting fears that the MMR immunization was unsafe before the nature of the error was discovered.
The government suspended vaccinations for 10 months before the outbreak — the period when Kennedy visited. His trip was organized by a Samoan anti-vaccine influencer, according to a 2021 blog post by Kennedy.
On Wednesday, Kennedy denied that his visit had fueled anti-vaccine sentiment. A spokesperson didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment on Monday.
“Anti-vaxxers from New Zealand came to be with him here,” Ekeroma said. “That’s how I know that his influence can be far-reaching.”
What did Kennedy say about the deaths?
“When the tissue samples were sent to New Zealand, most of those people did not have measles,” Kennedy told U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden, an Oregon Democrat.
Ekeroma, a medical doctor who also holds a doctorate in…
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