By Ahmed Aboulenein
WASHINGTON, Oct 8 (Reuters) – US Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. this week launched an agency-wide effort to study and document any health problems reported after vaccination, the Department of Health and Human Services said on Thursday.
The initiative is the latest step by Kennedy, who spent years questioning vaccine safety and founded an anti-vaccine group before taking office, to reshape federal immunization policy.
The American Academy of Pediatrics says childhood vaccines are studied in placebo-controlled and comparison-group trials and monitored for safety after approval.
The federal Vaccine Injury Table lists 14 compensable injuries across 16 vaccine types under the Vaccine Injury Compensation Program, a no-fault system in which claimants file against the government, not vaccine makers. Since 1988, it has awarded roughly $5 billion across about 12,300 injury and death claims.
The new moves, which appear to be part of Kennedy’s decades-long efforts to sow skepticism about vaccines, come as he faces legal challenges to his attempts to alter US childhood vaccination schedules and growing concern among public health experts about falling immunization rates, particularly against measles, which has seen a resurgence in the US since last year.
The effort centers on a National Institutes of Health clinic opened on Monday to treat and study patients reporting health problems after receiving vaccines, HHS said in a statement.
Other measures include a proposal by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services to reimburse physicians for reporting suspected injuries to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System, or VAERS; a CDC effort to update VAERS; and HHS requiring electronic health records to capture vaccine-related adverse events.
Kennedy has said US children receive too many vaccines, falsely claiming repeatedly that kids get up to 90 doses before age 18, which has been echoed by President Donald Trump. Kennedy has long argued that chemicals in vaccines are dangerous, though experts say there is no evidence of harm.
In his first year heading HHS, he fired all 17 independent expert members of the CDC’s vaccine advisory committee and selected new panelists, many of whom shared his anti-vaccine views.
In January, the CDC announced a revamped childhood vaccine schedule that reduced recommended vaccines, dropping universal recommendations for flu, rotavirus, hepatitis A, hepatitis B at birth, some forms of meningitis and respiratory syncytial virus.
A federal court issued a preliminary injunction in March blocking key parts of the proposed changes, finding that Kennedy and HHS had violated federal law in reshaping the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices. The injunction has prevented ACIP from holding meetings to make recommendations on immunizations often needed for insurance coverage.
(Reporting by Ahmed AbouleneinEditing by Bill Berkrot)
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