Remove funds from the Texas vaccination program spread the measles outbreak “like a hurricane”

It was not by chance that a measles outbreak that has shaken Texas spread rapidly through the state and beyond.

Measles is a highly contagious but easily preventable disease. In the United States had been considered eradicated Since 2000.

However, this year there have been hundreds of cases – more than those registered in all 2024 – and health officials say that this happened in part because the local health departments had not obtained the necessary funds for vaccination programs.

“For years we have not had a solid immunization program that can really address these situations from the ground,” says Katherine Wells, director of Health at Lubbock, 90 minutes per car in the west area of ​​Texas that has been the epicenter of the current outbreak. In Lubbock, despite the increase in population, has not increased in 15 years The amount granted by state authorities to finance the vaccination program.

The vaccines are of the most successful tools To promote public health, since they prevent the infection of diseases that can become disabling and reduce the need for expensive subsequent medical care.

Vaccinating in childhood helps prevent 4 million deaths worldwide each year, according to data from the centers for disease control and prevention (CDC), which says that only the measles vaccine could mean meaning 19 million lives saved by 2030.

Immunization programs are financed by a mixture of federal, state and local funds: federal money is sent to states, which then decides how much to pay for municipal health departments. These funds have been decimated in recent years, and in Texas and on other sides that gave way to the current measles outbreak and its rapid recreation in several states.

Now, republican administration plans Donald Trump to implement even more cuts Federal health funds threaten to generate greater risks of measles infections and other diseases.

During the Covid-19 pandemic, more funds were initially sent to health departments throughout the country, but it was not enough to compensate for many years of lack of financing. Now the Trump government has retired billions of dollars of those funds of the Era of COVID-19, including 2,000 million dollars specifically designed for immunization programs against various diseases.

In addition, the American audience has become more and more anti -vacacunas, and specialists say it is A combination that will only make the situation worse From here out.

In fact, he is the Secretary of Health, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who has been in charge of promoting these cuts after being a voice for many years of the anti -vacussion movement. Therefore, although Kennedy Jr. has said that he wants his agency to prevent future epidemics or pandemics, he has also been reluctant to promote vaccination more emphatically.

At the same time, Texas legislators and dozens of other states have promoted bills that make people choose not to vaccinate their children or immunize them and as adults, according to an analysis of . That will make the following years more difficult to control disease recreation, according to health officers.

More cases than in all 2024

In these first four months of 2025, more than 700 cases of measles are reported nationwide, which already exceed all cases registered in the 12 months of 2024.

The majority, around 540 cases, are reported only in Texas, although there are also infections in 23 other states.

Two Texan girls have lost their lives, which had not been vaccinated: a child under 6 years in Gaines County, where the outbreak began, died in February. Was The first death for measles in the United States recorded in a decade.

The other death was a child under 8, nor vaccinated, in the town of Seminole at the beginning of this month.

It is usually required that children in the United States have certain vaccines to be able to go to public school, which in the past had resulted in sufficient immunization rates so that diseases such as measles do not spread so much.

However, more and more parents have chosen not to inoculate their children: there is currently a record of people who have requested exemptions For vaccination requirements.

In 2023, only 92% of Kindergarten children received all necessary vaccines. Medical analysis developed over decades say that at least 95% are needed to consider that diseases can be controlled.

To ensure that there is a vaccination figure, a public commitment is necessary, a monitoring of the cases and that there is money.

In this context of casualties in vaccination is that the current measles outbreak – which began in Texas Mennonite communities that are anti -Vacunas – has spread to so many other places.

“It’s like having a hurricane that is about to be formed on warm waters of the Caribbean,” says Peter Hotez, co -director of Texas Children’s Center for Vaccine Development in Houston. “With warm water the hurricane will continue to accelerate. And in this case, warm water is the number of children without vaccines.”

Less funds in almost all states

Texas, where the current outbreak began, has the lowest per capita rates of public health financing throughout the United States, which in 2023 was around $ 17 per person, according to the State Health Access Data Assistance Center.

However, it is far from being the only state with financing problems for these programs.

The health departments on which millions of Americans depend to be immunized respond to only two federal programs: the Vaccine for Children and section 317 of the Public Health Services Law. The first of these is the one that destined for the most funds for vaccination, and the second gives subsidies especially so that vaccines are properly distributed, financing the salaries of medical personnel who know how to put the injections as well as material that promotes vaccinating.

Around half of children in the United States are eligible to benefit from Vaccines for Children, a security program created after an epidemic just from measles that between 1989 and 1991 left 55,000 contagions and 123 deaths.

Health departments usually gather the funds that come from the two programs, but for years the amount especially of the funds of section 317 has not changed.

1.6 billion dollars would be necessary to really pay what section 317 needs to cover, according to an analysis of the CDC sent to Congress in 2023.

But in 2024 the Congress only approved 682 million dollars; that is, less than half of what is required.

And in recent months the Trump administration announced, through Kennedy Jr., plans to further cut federal funds. Although these plans were temporarily suspended due to a demand for 23 states (Texas is not among them), several state governments have begun to cut services to avoid running out of public health money.

In the state of Washington, for example, authorities believe that they will fall short of $ 20 million of what they need for their vaccination program. The Officials already had to pause the “Care-A-Van” initiative, which since last summer had been used to administer more than 6,800 vaccines against COVID-19; 3,900 Vaccines against influenza, and 5,700 vaccines in need for minors.

In Connecticut, the authorities believe that they will run out of $ 26 million of what they need for immunization. That means, among other things, having to cancel 43 contracts so that municipal health departments can promote vaccination, cancellation of mobile clinics and stop distributing materials that deny myths related to vaccines.

In total, the lack of money causes difficult decisions to be made, according to Kelly Moore, a medical specialized in preventive medicine that directed the Tennessee immunization program between 2004 and 2018.

“It becomes necessary to think: what diseases can we prevent with that money and how many people we will be able to protect? Thus we have to determine every year in each state how to proceed,” says Moore, who now directs the Immunize.org Ombudsman Group.

Among these decisions is to analyze the high possibility that a clinic must be closed in rural areas, or that people cannot be served during weekends or in the afternoon. “It becomes very difficult to get the necessary and very difficult personnel for people to access these health services, especially if they are low -income working people,” says the specialist.

“And if we do not invest in educating people” about why it is important to get vaccinated, “it is even more difficult to control diseases,” he adds.

Moore summarizes it as follows: “As a doctor I have dedicated my life to helping people suffer less, and vaccines are a great way to achieve that. But if we do not invest in those vaccines, they reach those who need them, there is no health benefit.”