Extracts from a news item below, with thanks to Global Health Now. Full text: https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20250804-doctors-fight-vaccine-mis...
==
Răuceşti (Romania) (AFP) – When epidemiologist Daniela Gafita makes her rounds in the remote villages of northeastern Romania to educate communities about the risks of measles, she frequently encounters parents who hesitate to have their children vaccinated.
With measles cases in Europe hitting a 25-year high last year, Romania was the country most affected: it recorded 13,000 of the approximately 18,000 cases registered between June 2024 and May 2025 in the European Economic Area, which includes EU members as well as Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway.
But the disease has also re-emerged globally, with the United States confronting its worst epidemic in 30 years, in part fuelled by anti-vaccine misinformation that has been circulating on social media since the Covid-19 pandemic...
Elena Armenia, who also lives in the village of 7,500 people, told AFP that she did not want her youngest child to be vaccinated after reading "about a link to autism" online, a misconception that has been refuted by the scientific community...
During the Covid pandemic, public figures in Romania but also worldwide began launching or endorsing anti-vaccination campaigns, with US President Donald Trump appointing Robert F. Kennedy Jr as health secretary despite his support of anti-vaccine conspiracy theories.
Romania's far right also seized on anger over strict pandemic measures and started promoting anti-vaccine beliefs.
==
Best wishes, neil
HIFA profile: Neil Pakenham-Walsh is coordinator of HIFA (Healthcare Information For All), a global health community that brings all stakeholders together around the shared goal of universal access to reliable healthcare information. HIFA has 20,000 members in 180 countries, interacting in four languages and representing all parts of the global evidence ecosystem. HIFA is administered by Global Healthcare Information Network, a UK-based nonprofit in official relations with the World Health Organization. Email: neil@hifa.org