Secretary Kennedy's Message to GAVI, Jun. 26, 2025
June 26, 2025 · U.S. Department of Health and Human Services · 0:03:45
Embedded from the source channel — never re-uploaded. Watch on YouTube
What happened
HHS published Secretary Kennedy’s message to GAVI, the Vaccine Alliance, on June 26, 2025. In the statement carried in HHS’s description, Kennedy says GAVI ‘has neglected the key issue of vaccine safety’ and treated safety issues ’not as a patient health problem, but as a public relations problem,’ and that during the COVID-19 pandemic GAVI partnered with the World Health Organization on recommendations to ‘silence dissenting views and to stifle free speech.’ He calls on GAVI ’to re-earn the public trust and to justify the $8 billion dollars that America has provided in funding since 2001,’ adding: ‘Until that happens the United States won’t contribute more to GAVI. Business as usual is over.’
Why it matters
The message conditions further U.S. funding for the global vaccine alliance on Kennedy’s vaccine-safety and accountability terms — a major international-health funding position taken in his own words.
Scoreboard watch
Kennedy’s statements here — $8 billion in U.S. funding to GAVI since 2001 and no further U.S. contributions until GAVI re-earns public trust — are recorded as stated, for the scoreboard’s Health record.
Sources: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, ‘Secretary Kennedy’s Message to GAVI’ (HHS upload, embedded above).
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