Florida is aiming to become the first US state to cancel all of its vaccine mandates, many of which require children to get jabs against diseases like polio in order to attend public schools.
The state’s top health official, Florida Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo, likened the mandates to “slavery”, in announcing the plans on Wednesday.
“Who am I to tell you what your child should put in your body?” he said. “I don’t have that right. Your body is a gift from God.”
Florida officials did not give a timeline or details on ending the mandates. Several may only be repealed through a vote by the Republican-led state legislature, while others can be scrapped by the state health department.
Ladapo, though, pledged several times during his news conference to end “all of them, every last one of them.”
The surgeon general has been frequently criticised by doctors and health groups, who say he has spread vaccine misinformation, while his boss, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, a Republican, pushed against Covid-19 vaccine mandates.
Democratic state lawmaker Anna Eskamani was among those criticising plan to end all mandates, decrying it as “reckless and dangerous”.
“This is a public health disaster in the making for the Sunshine State,” she posted on X.
While every state requires children to be vaccinated in order to attend public schools, each one has different policies about giving exemptions to the mandates. Idaho, another Republican-dominated state, loosened many of its rules on vaccines earlier this year, but still requires children to be immunised.
In Florida, students are currently required to be vaccinated against multiple illnesses, including chicken pox, hepatitis B, measles, mumps, and polio.
According to the World Health Organization, vaccines have saved at least 154 million lives – mostly infants – in the past 50 years.
The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) says that about four million deaths are prevented worldwide each year by childhood vaccinations.
On Wednesday, a group of Democratic-led states announced that they had created an alliance to co-ordinate on health matters, including immunisations, in opposition to the Trump administration’s overhaul and changes to public health programmes and guidance.
The governors of Washington, Oregon and California said they will use guidance from national medical organisations, many of which have rejected the Trump administration’s changes to childhood vaccinations, and lean less on advice from the federal goverment.
In a joint press release they said Trump was “dismantling” the CDC, and blasted the recent decision by US Health Secretary Robert F Kennedy, Jr – a prominent vaccine sceptic – to remove experts from the CDC’s vaccine advisory panel.
By BBC News
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