Tag Archives: Children and Childhood

In a first test of the Trump administration’s ability to respond to an infectious disease emergency, its top health official has shied away from one of the government’s most important tools, experts said on Sunday: loudly and directly encouraging parents to get their children vaccinated. Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the health secretary, was widely criticized as minimizing the measles outbreak …

Every day, as Dr. Wendell Parkey enters his clinic in Seminole, a small city on the rural western edge of Texas, he announces his arrival to the staff with an anthem pumping loudly through speakers. As the song reaches a climax, he throws up an arm and strikes a pose in cowboy boots. “Y’all ready to stomp out disease?” he …

A child has died of measles in West Texas, the first known death from an outbreak of the disease that is spreading in the state and in neighboring New Mexico, officials said on Wednesday. Health officials in Lubbock and the Texas Department of State Health Services said in a statement that the patient was an unvaccinated school-age child who had …

A worsening measles outbreak has taken root in Texas, sickening two dozen and hospitalizing nine on the western edge of the state, where childhood vaccination rates have dwindled in recent years. As of Tuesday, 22 children and two adults had been infected, all of whom were unvaccinated, local health officials said. The outbreak comes as Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a …

Traveling with a baby or a toddler can be fun, frustrating, even revelatory. Planning is key, and so is your willingness to tailor the trip to the youngest traveler. As Dr. Elizabeth Barnett, the director of the pediatric travel program at Boston Medical Center, advises, “If you take a young child, it’s all about the child.” Choose one (or two) …

Traveling with a baby or a toddler can be fun, frustrating, even revelatory. Planning is key, and so is your willingness to tailor the trip to the youngest traveler. As Dr. Elizabeth Barnett, the director of the pediatric travel program at Boston Medical Center, advises, “If you take a young child, it’s all about the child.” Choose one (or two) …

At Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s confirmation hearings, beginning on Wednesday, senators are expected to question him closely about his controversial views on vaccines. For years Mr. Kennedy has questioned the safety of vaccines, including those for polio and measles, two diseases that continue to harm children. More recently, he has said that he’s not planning to take vaccines away from …

When President Bill Clinton worked with a bipartisan Congress to enact a federal program to guarantee vaccines for poor children, they agreed that the authority over buying shots from drug makers should rest with the health secretary. The bill’s drafters did not consider that an extremely vocal critic of childhood vaccines would emerge as a nominee for the role. That …

Over the past year, Muanema Fakira noticed something odd about the eyes of her 1-year-old daughter Sumaya. Her left eye was cloudy. It did not gleam with curiosity or glint in the sun. When the problem persisted, Ms. Fakira made the rounds to health clinics in their town in central Mozambique. Doctors said they could not help. But they knew …

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has often trained his criticisms of vaccines on a common ingredient: aluminum, which he has suggested is responsible for a litany of childhood ailments, including food allergies, autism and depression. “You wonder why a whole generation of children is allergic to stuff,” Mr. Kennedy said during a 2021 interview. “It’s because we’re inducing allergies, pumping them …