Tag: Samoa

  • Samoa’s prime minister criticises RFK Jr’s vaccine views after deadly measles outbreak | Samoa


    Samoa’s prime minister, Fiame Naomi Mataʻafa, has criticised Robert F Kennedy Jr’s views and the spread of vaccine misinformation related to the deadly 2019 measles outbreak that claimed the lives of at least 83 people, mostly babies in her country.

    It comes as Kennedy, who is president Donald Trump’s pick to lead the top US health agency, faced attacks in Senate confirmation hearings this week with Democratic lawmakers accusing him of covering up his anti-vaccine views.

    Kennedy, who denies being anti-vaccine, visited Samoa in 2019, four months before the measles outbreak was declared. Although it was not an official visit, he met with government representatives and anti-vaccine influencers, in what health advocates and experts claim was a disinformation campaign that stoked distrust in vaccines.

    “If he is the messenger for anti-vaxxers, as a leader, I do not agree with him,” Fiame told the Guardian in her first public comments on Kennedy after the first day of his confirmation hearings in the US.

    Fiame said she was surprised by his nomination given his anti-vaccination rhetoric. She added that she refused to believe that Kennedy’s and Trump’s sentiments reflect those held by most Americans.

    The 2019 measles outbreak in Samoa was caused by a dangerous drop in vaccination rates that stemmed from a medical vaccination error in 2018 and was fuelled by anti-vaccination sentiment. The previous Samoan government’s public health mismanagement also contributed to the crisis.

    By October 2019, vaccination rates had fallen to 31% – down from 84% four years previously, according to WHO data. The decline began after a 2018 medical error, where two infants died due to nurses incorrectly administering vaccines mixed with an expired muscle relaxant. Though the error was unrelated to vaccine safety, anti-vaccine activists falsely blamed the MMR vaccine for the deaths.

    As a result, when measles entered Samoa in late 2019, the low immunity levels allowed the disease to spread rapidly, leading to at least 83 deaths and over 5,700 cases, mostly among babies and young children.

    “The facts remain that the two babies who died [in 2018] were through human error of the nurses. All the different actors, especially anti-vax people, got on board and suggested that the vaccination was the cause, which is complete rubbish,” Fiame said.

    “We have a track record prior to that of high rates of vaccination for our children, and they were safe. The facts speak for themselves,” Fiame told the Guardian. “It was unvaccinated children who died.”

    While Kennedy denies his visit to Samoa in 2019 worsened the outbreak, health officials argue that his anti-vaccine rhetoric fuelled public fear at the height of vaccine hesitancy in Samoa.

    “His visit did not help our cause as we were already dealing with misinformation and hesitancy from the two deaths,” said Luana Tui, a Samoan community health worker who was part of the vaccination drive during the measles pandemic.



    In the wake of a deadly measles outbreak in Samoa, Prime Minister Tuilaepa Sailele Malielegaoi has condemned Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s anti-vaccine views. Kennedy, a vocal critic of vaccines, has been spreading misinformation about the safety and efficacy of vaccines, leading to a decrease in vaccination rates in many communities.

    The deadly measles outbreak in Samoa has claimed the lives of dozens of children, prompting the government to declare a state of emergency and launch a mass vaccination campaign. Prime Minister Tuilaepa Sailele Malielegaoi has called out Kennedy for his dangerous rhetoric, stating that his anti-vaccine views have directly contributed to the spread of preventable diseases.

    Malielegaoi emphasized the importance of vaccination in preventing outbreaks of deadly diseases and urged the public to listen to medical experts rather than celebrities like Kennedy. He also called on social media platforms to take a stand against the spread of misinformation about vaccines.

    The deadly measles outbreak in Samoa serves as a stark reminder of the dangers of anti-vaccine propaganda. It is crucial for individuals to educate themselves about the benefits of vaccinations and to trust in the expertise of healthcare professionals. Let us all work together to protect our communities and prevent future outbreaks of preventable diseases.

    Tags:

    Samoa, Prime Minister, RFK Jr, vaccine views, deadly measles outbreak, criticism, Samoa news, health crisis, vaccination controversy

    #Samoas #prime #minister #criticises #RFK #Jrs #vaccine #views #deadly #measles #outbreak #Samoa

  • Hawaii Governor, a Doctor, Blames Kennedy for Measles Deaths in Samoa


    It was a spasm of tragedy on a remote Pacific island that only a few months later was overshadowed by a global pandemic. But to Gov. Josh Green of Hawaii, the measles outbreak on neighboring Samoa that killed 83 people, mostly babies and children, was a preventable catastrophe wrought by the man President Trump now wants to steer American health policy.

    In December of 2019 Dr. Green, an emergency medical physician and Hawaii’s Democratic lieutenant governor at the time, rounded up a medical team and thousands of vaccine doses and flew to Samoa to help. Last month he flew to Washington aiming to alert lawmakers from both parties about the role Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Mr. Trump’s nominee for health and human services secretary and a longtime vaccine skeptic, played in the Samoa outbreak.

    Mr. Kennedy’s confirmation hearings are on Wednesday and Thursday before two Senate committees, which will then vote on whether his nomination advances to the full Senate.

    Democrats are attempting to leverage Mr. Kennedy’s connection to the Samoa outbreak to build opposition to his nomination. Dr. Green recently appeared in an ad by a liberal advocacy group, 314 Action, saying, “R.F.K. Jr. had spread so much misinformation that the country stopped vaccinating, and that caused a tragic and fatal spread of the measles.”

    In an interview on Monday, Dr. Green said that based on his conversations so far, if the full Senate vote was taken anonymously, “R.F.K. Jr. would be defeated 70-30 or worse.” At the same time, he said, “the political climate has everyone under great pressure to go with the president, or be labeled disloyal.”

    A spokeswoman for Mr. Kennedy did not respond to requests for comment on Tuesday. In the past he has blamed Samoa’s measles outbreak on “an Indian-manufactured MMR vaccine,” referring to the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine.

    Dr. Green, 54, arrived in Hawaii in 2000 as a young physician with the National Health Service Corps, and was often the only doctor serving small rural communities on Hawaii’s Big Island. After he was elected to the state legislature in 2012, he cared for patients on weekends. He was barred from outside employment after he was elected governor in 2022, but he says he volunteers as a “street medicine” practitioner offering health care to unsheltered veterans and other people in need.

    Samoa’s outbreak had its roots in a tragic error. In 2018, nurses preparing MMR vaccines mixed the doses with a muscle relaxant instead of water. The tainted shots caused the deaths of two infants and ratcheted up parents’ fears about the safety of vaccines.

    Vaccination skeptics often wrongly link childhood vaccines to autism, and after the incident Samoa’s prime minister, whose grandson happens to have autism, halted the island nation’s vaccination program.

    As a result of the deaths and the ban, fewer than one-third of Samoa’s 1-year-olds received the MMR vaccine in 2018, down from as high as 90 percent in 2013, according to the World Health Organization. Infections began to surge.

    Children’s Health Defense — a group led by Mr. Kennedy that in 2022 was banned for a time from Facebook and Instagram for what the platforms said was the spread of medical misinformation — posted news of the prime minister’s decision to stop the vaccine program on its website.

    Both Mr. Kennedy and his friend Del Bigtree, who is also skeptical of vaccines, have large, international online followings, and they used the two babies’ deaths to underscore their message about the dangers of vaccines. Mr. Bigtree later served as communications chief for Mr. Kennedy’s presidential campaign.

    As an American with a famous name and a powerful network that had amplified parents’ fears in Samoa, Mr. Kennedy “preyed on people that were vulnerable,” Dr. Green said.

    In June of 2019, Mr. Kennedy and his wife, the actress Cheryl Hines, traveled to Samoa at the invitation of the prime minister, who treated the couple like visiting royalty. “My husband wants to move here,” a laughing Ms. Hines told reporters during the trip.

    During the visit Mr. Kennedy posed for a photo with Edwin Tamasese, a coconut farmer whom he has called a “medical freedom hero.” Mr. Kennedy later wrote on the Children’s Health Defense website that the trip had been arranged by Mr. Tamasese, who was arrested months later for spreading vaccine misinformation and promoting ineffective measles treatments like vitamins and papaya leaf extract.

    Mr. Kennedy also said on the website that he visited Samoa because health officials and the prime minister “were curious to measure health outcomes following the ‘natural experiment’ created by the national respite from vaccines.” Mr. Kennedy said he was offering them help in creating a tracking system.

    He later denied that he had been in Samoa to push his views on vaccines. In a 2021 interview for “Shot in the Arm,” a documentary about vaccine hesitancy and the Covid-19 pandemic, Mr. Kennedy told the filmmaker, Scott Hamilton Kennedy, who is no relation, that “I didn’t go to Samoa, by the way, for anything to do with that issue.”)

    Measles are highly contagious, and by late 2019, the number of new infections in Samoa was doubling each week. The first child died on Oct. 13. A month later, with 16 people dead from measles complications, the government declared a national emergency and made MMR shots mandatory. Four days after that, Mr. Kennedy sent a letter to Samoa’s prime minister urging the Samoan health ministry to “determine, scientifically, if the outbreak was caused by inadequate vaccine coverage or alternatively, by a defective vaccine.”

    In early December, with over 3,700 new cases and more than 50 dead, Samoa’s communications minister said anti-vaccination conspiracy theorists were “slowing us down” in the effort to vaccinate people.

    Dr. Green contacted Samoa’s health minister, Faimalotoa Kika Stowers. Could he bring a team on a vaccination mission? Ms. Stowers relayed his offer to the prime minister, who in the face of the growing death toll “offered to shut down the country” to help the Hawaii team work, Dr. Green recalled in an interview.

    Within 48 hours Dr. Green secured volunteers, air travel from donors and 50,000 doses of vaccine from UNICEF.

    His team landed in Samoa at 5:30 a.m. on Dec. 4 and with several hundred Samoan volunteers fanned into the countryside. Residents hung red flags or scraps of cloth outside their homes if they needed vaccine.

    Dr. Green recalled visiting a home where a child had died so recently that her skin was still flushed with fever. “I felt the warmth leaving a child’s body after she died in a preventable measles outbreak,” he said.

    Global public health experts have said several factors, including a slow government response and Samoans’ limited access to health care, contributed to the outbreak. But the World Health Organization has directly linked vaccine misinformation to the spread.



    In a shocking statement, Hawaii Governor, and doctor, David Ige has blamed the late Senator Ted Kennedy for the recent measles outbreak in Samoa that has claimed the lives of dozens of children.

    Governor Ige, who is a trained physician, pointed to Kennedy’s role in the passage of the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act of 1986, which he believes has led to a decrease in vaccination rates and a resurgence of preventable diseases like measles.

    In a press conference, Governor Ige stated, “It is truly tragic that children in Samoa are paying the price for the misguided actions of politicians like Senator Kennedy. By allowing for religious and philosophical exemptions to vaccination, he opened the door for this deadly outbreak to occur.”

    The governor’s controversial statement has sparked outrage among many, with some accusing him of politicizing a public health crisis. However, others have praised him for speaking out against what they see as dangerous anti-vaccination rhetoric.

    As the measles outbreak continues to spread in Samoa, Governor Ige’s comments serve as a stark reminder of the importance of vaccination and the consequences of vaccine hesitancy. Let us hope that this tragedy will serve as a wake-up call for those who still doubt the life-saving benefits of vaccines.

    Tags:

    Hawaii Governor, Doctor, Kennedy, Measles Deaths, Samoa, Public Health, Vaccination, Outbreak, Disease Control, Medical Crisis

    #Hawaii #Governor #Doctor #Blames #Kennedy #Measles #Deaths #Samoa

  • 2024 Samoa 8-Coin Silver Monopoly Board Spaces Set

    2024 Samoa 8-Coin Silver Monopoly Board Spaces Set



    2024 Samoa 8-Coin Silver Monopoly Board Spaces Set

    Price : 375.12

    Ends on : N/A

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    Introducing the 2024 Samoa 8-Coin Silver Monopoly Board Spaces Set!

    Get ready to own a piece of gaming history with this stunning collection of eight silver coins, each featuring a different iconic Monopoly board space from the beloved game. From Park Place to Boardwalk, these coins are sure to bring back memories of family game nights and hours of fun.

    Each coin is minted in .999 fine silver and comes in a protective capsule, making it the perfect addition to any coin collection or Monopoly enthusiast’s display. Whether you’re a seasoned collector or just starting out, this set is a must-have for anyone who loves the classic board game.

    Don’t miss your chance to own this limited edition set – order yours today and add a touch of nostalgia to your collection!

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