The United States has reported its first measles death in a decade after an unvaccinated child fell ill amid an outbreak of the highly contagious disease in Texas.
The school-aged child died overnight after being hospitalised in Lubbock, northwest Texas, the state’s health department said in a statement on Wednesday.
The death comes amid falling immunisation rates in the US and controversy over the appointment of vaccine sceptic Robert F Kennedy Jr as the country’s top health official.
More than 130 measles cases have been reported in Texas and the neighbouring state of New Mexico this year, almost all of them in people who were not vaccinated.
Health officials have said most of the cases have been concentrated in a community of followers of the Mennonite Christian sect, pockets of which are known for being wary of vaccines.
Addressing the outbreak at US President Donald Trump’s first cabinet meeting on Wednesday, Kennedy, who has promoted scientifically discredited research linking vaccines to autism, downplayed the outbreak as “not unusual”.
“Incidentally, there have been four measles outbreaks this year in this country,” Kennedy told reporters.
“Last year, there were 16. So, it’s not unusual. We have measles outbreaks every year.”
The number of measles cases in the US hit a nearly two-decade peak of 1,274 in 2019, before plummeting during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Authorities reported 285 cases in 2024, up from 59 in 2023 and 121 the year before that.
The World Health Organization declared measles eliminated from the US in 2000 – meaning no outbreaks had persisted for a year or more – but that status has come under threat in recent years amid growing anti-vaccine sentiment.
The US last reported a measles-related death in 2015, after 12 years without a fatality linked to the disease.
Measles can be extremely dangerous for people who are not vaccinated, including young infants who are not usually eligible for immunisation.
About one in five unvaccinated people in the US who get measles are hospitalised, and as many as one out of every 20 children with measles get pneumonia, according to the CDC.
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