The World Health Organization (WHO) Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus has accused United States President Donald Trump of disregarding decades of scientific evidence with his recent efforts to overhaul childhood vaccination policies in the US.

This statement came on Wednesday, August 12, 2026, shortly after Trump signed an executive order calling for a reconsideration of school vaccine mandates. The order also renewed calls to split the combined measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccine into three separate doses.

Trump’s Health Secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., has long promoted a disproven link between the MMR vaccine and autism, despite no medical evidence supporting this claim. In response, Tedros emphasized that the science is "unequivocal" that vaccines, including the MMR vaccine, are safe and do not cause autism.

"Vaccination policy should be guided by rigorous, independent and transparent review of the best available science, not by political influence," Tedros wrote in a post on X. He added that "that evidence is reviewed continuously as new data emerge from across the globe."

The WHO chief's comments come amid rising measles cases in the US, with 2,318 cases already recorded in 2026, surpassing the total for 2025.

Additional public health topics noted by WHO include the potential of the HPV vaccine to eliminate cervical cancer deaths and the Democratic Republic of Congo’s Ebola outbreak, which began months before it was officially declared.

Sources