US Secretary of Health Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced during a meeting in Brussels this week that the country is withdrawing its financial support for the global vaccine alliance Gavi.
The announcement comes as Gavi has launched a new funding round with the goal of raising at least $9 billion for the next five years.
Kennedy, who has long been highly skeptical of large-scale mass vaccination programs and experimental vaccines, sharply criticized Gavi and its collaboration with the World Health Organization (WHO) during the coronavirus crisis in a brief video address. He accused the alliance of systematically silencing “dissenting views” and ignoring health risks and safety issues related to the vaccines.
“In its zeal to promote universal vaccination, Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance has neglected the key issue of vaccine safety”, Kennedy later wrote in a post on X, and continued:
“When vaccine safety issues have come before GAVI, it has treated them not as a patient health problem, but as a public relations problem”.
In its zeal to promote universal vaccination, @gavi, the Vaccine Alliance has neglected the key issue of vaccine safety. When vaccine safety issues have come before GAVI, it has treated them not as a patient health problem, but as a public relations problem.
During the COVID-19… pic.twitter.com/z140rJQMnn
— Secretary Kennedy (@SecKennedy) June 25, 2025
Kennedy also questioned the safety of the combined vaccine against diphtheria, tetanus, and pertussis, claiming that research shows girls who received the vaccine are at higher risk of dying from other causes than unvaccinated children. He also expressed skepticism about WHO’s and Gavi’s recommendation to vaccinate pregnant women against COVID-19 – a recommendation he called “questionable”.
“I call on GAVI to re-earn the public trust and to justify the $8 billion dollars that America has provided in funding since 2001. Until that happens the United States won’t contribute more to GAVI. Business as usual is over”, he declared.
US promised one billion
According to Kennedy, Gavi must start “consider the best science available, even when that science contradicts established paradigms”.
In a statement on Thursday, Gavi claimed that the organization’s highest priority is children’s health and safety. They also stated that all decisions about which vaccines to procure are made according to recommendations from WHO’s expert group on vaccines.
Gavi is a global partnership between WHO, UNICEF, the Gates Foundation, the World Bank, and several governments, working to promote affordable mass vaccination programs in poor countries. The United States has long been one of the organization’s largest donors – and had, before Donald Trump’s re-election, promised support of $1 billion through 2030.