WHO chief says Trump vaccine push goes against 'decades of evidence'

The World Health Organization (WHO) chief has accused United States President Donald Trump of ignoring "decades of evidence" with his push to overhaul US childhood vaccination policy.

The warning from WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus on Wednesday comes days after Trump signed an order calling for a rethink of school vaccine mandates and renewed calls for the split of the 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 shot and autism.

But Tedros said the science is "unequivocal" and 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," he wrote in a post on X.

"That evidence is reviewed continuously as new data emerge from across the globe," he added.

The WHO chief also warned that "delaying vaccines or separating doses unnecessarily does not make vaccination safer and can leave children unprotected."

Since joining the Trump administration, Kennedy has launched a sweeping review of longstanding vaccines, rewritten the childhood immunisation schedule, and slashed funding for new vaccine development.