REPORT: RFK Jr. Blocked $600 Million in Vaccines — 600,000 Children Will Die

REPORT: RFK Jr. Blocked $600 Million in Vaccines — 600,000 Children Will Die

Introduction: When Ideology Kills Children

One man, one conviction, one global catastrophe

The paradox of an anti-vaccine Secretary of Health

He did not go to the camps. He did not look the children in the eyes. Robert F. Kennedy Jr., American Secretary of Health and Human Services, simply refused to sign the checks. Twice. For a total of $600 million in American contributions to Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance — the organization that vaccinates 60 percent of the world's children. The result is an equation that global health demographers had not dared contemplate since the last decades of the twentieth century: global child mortality rising for the first time since 1990.

This is not a theory. It is not an alarmist projection. Seth Berkley, Gavi's CEO for twelve years and now senior advisor at the Pandemic Center at Brown University, said it without softening: 600,000 children will die as a direct consequence of Kennedy's decision. This figure is revised downward from an initial estimate of 1.2 million — only because Gavi succeeded, through a creative rearrangement of vaccine schedules, in getting more doses out than expected despite the absence of American funding.

Thimerosal: An Obsession at the Expense of Facts

The impossible condition imposed by Kennedy

What science actually says about thimerosal

RFK Jr. ordered the cessation of payments to Gavi until the organization phased out thimerosal — an organomercury compound used as a preservative in multidose vaccines. Low- and middle-income countries use these multidose vaccines because they are easier to transport, store, and distribute at scale in areas without a reliable cold chain. Thimerosal prevents contamination of vials between multiple uses.

Kennedy has claimed for decades that thimerosal causes autism. Sarah Despres, a former Health Department advisor under the Biden administration and now a vaccination policy consultant, is unambiguous: "No causal link has been established." She added: "But Secretary Kennedy simply does not believe that." The scientific consensus is unanimous — this type of mercury compound is safe at the doses used in vaccines. Only 14 percent of vaccines distributed by Gavi contain thimerosal. This figure is crucial and Kennedy never mentioned it publicly.

$600 Million Blocked: The Accounting of a Lethal Choice

Two congressional authorizations, two refusals

The political weight of American funding for Gavi

The U.S. Congress had authorized $300 million in contributions to Gavi for fiscal year 2025. RFK Jr. refused to release the funds. Congress renewed the authorization for 2026 — same amount. Kennedy refused again. Total blocked: $600 million over two years. The United States represents approximately 15 percent of Gavi's total funding — one-seventh of the Alliance's resources.

This share may seem modest. It is not. Gavi was founded in 2000 precisely because American contributions gave the signal to other donors — the United Kingdom, Germany, European Union, Japan, and the Gates Foundation — to invest massively. When the United States withdraws, the effect is not simply proportional: it is the entire political and financial signal of Western commitment that wavers. The State Department watched in silence for months, leaving Gavi to struggle with impossible vaccination targets.

Seth Berkley Facing the Unspeakable: 600,000 Lives

The man who counted the dead before they occurred

From 1.2 million to 600,000: how Gavi mitigated the disaster

Seth Berkley, who led Gavi for twelve years before joining Brown University, is one of the few people speaking in verifiable figures rather than diplomatic formulas. His assessment is devastating: "RFK took control and stopped all funding to Gavi," he said. The initial estimate had been 1.2 million excess deaths. Gavi then performed a creative rearrangement of its vaccine schedules and managed to get more doses out than expected despite the absence of American support. The revised figure: 600,000 children who will die without having received their vaccines.

Berkley also highlights the economic equation that Kennedy ignores: "For every dollar invested in vaccines, you get a $54 return." This is not only a moral obligation but an investment whose return exceeds any financial asset class. Gavi vaccinates 60 percent of the world's children. The American withdrawal did not merely reduce the budget — it forced poor countries to pay out of pocket for vaccines that were previously distributed free of charge, and to choose which vaccines to buy and which to sacrifice.

Emergency Stocks Sacrificed: Cholera, Meningitis, Mpox, Ebola

When reserves disappear before the epidemics

Ituri and the specter of an epidemic without surveillance

Gavi maintains emergency stocks of vaccines available free to countries struck by outbreaks. These reserves were reduced to cope with the absence of American funding. The affected vaccines: cholera, meningitis, Mpox, yellow fever, and Ebola. This is not an abstract list — it is the map of current and future health catastrophes in sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia, and Southeast Asia.

The timing is particularly brutal. While Ebola stocks were melting away, the CDC was closing its surveillance offices in Ituri Province, in the Democratic Republic of Congo — the precise epicenter of an uncontrolled Ebola epidemic. Less surveillance, less stock, less funding: the perfect combination to turn a regional epidemic into a global crisis. Gavin Yamey, professor and director of the Center for Policy Impact in Global Health at Duke University, calls Kennedy's requirements the equivalent of "holding vulnerable children in low- and middle-income countries hostage."

The Figure That Hurts: 4.8 Million Children Dead in 2025

The first increase since 1990

USAID, Gavi, and the multiplication of causes of mortality

In 1990, 12.6 million children under five died every year worldwide. By 2024, that figure had fallen to 4.6 million — the fruit of thirty-four years of uninterrupted progress, with vaccines among the most powerful drivers. In 2025, the figure rose for the first time since the beginning of this century: 4.8 million.

This reversal is not the product of a single cause. The dismantling of USAID under the Trump administration contributed directly: 330,000 people died in the months following the agency's elimination — deaths that would not have occurred if USAID programs had maintained their activities. This figure was expected to surpass 600,000 by November, two-thirds of them children. Kennedy's decision on Gavi is part of this broader picture of American disengagement from global health.

USAID Erased: The Context of a Systemic Disengagement

Gavi is not an isolated incident — it is a policy

The void left by American withdrawal

Kennedy's decision on Gavi is not a misstep. It is part of a coherent strategy to dismantle America's global health infrastructure. USAID — the United States Agency for International Development — was gutted in the first months of the Trump administration. Its health programs in Zimbabwe, Ethiopia, Mali, and India were abruptly terminated.

The result is a void that other donors — however generous — cannot fill as quickly. The United Kingdom, Germany, the EU, Japan, and the Gates Foundation are major contributors to Gavi, but the American decision sends a destabilizing signal that money alone cannot counterbalance. Gavin Yamey calls this disengagement an "aberration" and a "unprecedented" break with normal American international health practices — a domain historically bipartisan.

Rubio Takes Control: The Belated Correction

June 2: the Secretary of State enters the picture

Berkley's conditional: a correction without guarantees

On June 2, 2026, Marco Rubio declared before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that he was "taking control" of American contributions to Gavi, removing them from the oversight of RFK Jr. and his anti-vaccine circle. The State Department would "re-engage" with Gavi. This announcement was greeted with cautious relief by global health experts.

But caution is warranted. Berkley himself qualifies it: "If the State Department takes over the relationship, it should become more rational and science-based. If that is true, it is a good thing for the world." The conditional is heavy with meaning. Months have passed. Stocks have been depleted. Programs have been interrupted. The $600 million has not yet been released. And the 600,000 children condemned by Kennedy's inaction are not saved by Rubio's declaration.

The Return of Polio and Advancing Ebola

The diseases benefiting from the American void

Three combined factors for an announced catastrophe

While Washington wrestled with its ideological quarrels, polio began to regain ground. Eradicated in virtually the entire world, it is resurfacing in countries where vaccination campaigns have been interrupted or slowed for lack of funding. This is not a coincidence of timing. It is a direct consequence of cuts to mass vaccination programs supported by Gavi and USAID.

At the same time, Ebola is spreading in the DRC, in Ituri Province, without adequate surveillance. Ebola vaccine stocks have been reduced. The American CDC teams that should have been monitoring the spread have been withdrawn. The combination of these three factors — no surveillance, no stock, no funding — creates the conditions for a spread that the international community would have the greatest difficulty containing if the epidemic crosses national borders.

Yamey: Vaccine Inequality as Political Crime

The distinction that kills: rich countries vs. poor countries

The global vaccine pipeline under ideological pressure

Rich countries use single-dose vaccines. Poor countries use multidose vaccines — precisely the ones that contain thimerosal. Kennedy therefore imposed a condition that applies only to vaccines destined for the most vulnerable populations on the planet. Gavin Yamey says it plainly: this requirement was calculated to cause "massive disruption and enormous changes across the entire vaccine pipeline."

This is not a public health policy. It is a health inequality policy. The implicit message is that the scientific standards applied to American children do not apply to African or Asian children — not because the science differs by latitude, but because multidose vaccines are the only logistically viable option for countries without advanced cold chain infrastructure. Applying Kennedy's logic to these realities means condemning poor children to die from preventable diseases.

Irreversible Damage: Eighteen Months of Inaction

The irreversible damage of eighteen months of inaction

The broken trust of Gavi's beneficiary countries

Even if Rubio releases the $600 million tomorrow, some damage is irreversible. Children who should have been vaccinated during optimal age windows — between zero and five years old — and were not, have lost that protection. The outbreaks that spread while stocks were insufficient have already caused deaths. The closed surveillance offices have left blind spots in the detection of emerging epidemics.

And there is the long-term effect on institutional trust. Gavi's beneficiary countries have seen the United States behave as a capricious partner, capable of conditioning the health funding of their children on the personal convictions of a single man. Rebuilding that trust will take years. Berkley expresses it with unusual candor: the State Department's re-engagement is good news if and only if it materializes in actions, not declarations.

American Isolation in the Fight for Global Health

While America hesitated, others moved forward

The inversion of global leadership in public health

While RFK Jr. was blocking American contributions, the other major donors to Gavi continued and, in some cases, increased their support. The United Kingdom, Germany, the European Union, Japan, and the Gates Foundation all maintained or reinforced their commitments. The United Kingdom even surpassed the American contribution in absolute terms in recent years.

This reversal of positions is historically significant. For decades, it was American leadership that set the tone and drew others along. Today, the United States has become the class underperformer — the one whose partners must compensate for its failures. Yamey expresses hope for it as "a support signal," but notes that global health has always been "a remarkably bipartisan concern" in the United States. That bipartisanship no longer holds.

Conclusion: The Bill of Ideology

Six hundred thousand children as moral accounting

Institutions as the only bulwark against murderous ideology

The story of RFK Jr. and the $600 million blocked is not a story about vaccines. It is a story about the power of an unfounded ideological conviction when it lands in the hands of a man with authority over global public health. One man, one obsession, and the consequences are measured in hundreds of thousands of dead children.

What the international scientific community will take from this episode is that scientific consensus does not automatically protect against political decisions that deny it. Protection comes from institutions — constitutional safeguards, oversight structures, balances of power that prevent a single individual from transforming personal beliefs into a death policy. Where these safeguards failed, it is children who paid the bill. Gavi, Berkley, Yamey, Despres said it publicly. History has heard them. The question is whether American institutions draw the necessary lessons before it happens again.

Conclusion: What the World Must Learn from This Crisis

The systemic fragility revealed by one man's decisions

The vaccine coverage that thirty-four years built in months destroyed

The Gavi crisis reveals a structural vulnerability of global health systems: they depend too much on the continuity of American political will. When that will is interrupted by an ideological actor in a key position, the cascade effect is global and immediate. 600 million dollars blocked, 600,000 deaths projected, thirty-four years of progress partially reversed. The architecture of global health must be made more resilient, with more diversified sources of funding and decision-making structures that do not depend on a single country's political volatility.

This is not a criticism of the United States as a country. It is a recognition that the global health system created after World War II — with the United States as its central pillar — needs to be rebuilt for a world where American leadership is no longer guaranteed. Other donors, particularly in Europe and Japan, have shown they can step up. The question is whether the international architecture will adapt fast enough to prevent the next Kennedy from having the same lethal power.

Conclusion: The Moral Debt That Cannot Be Repaid

What Rubio's re-engagement cannot undo

The imperative of preventing the next Kennedy

Marco Rubio's re-engagement with Gavi is a step in the right direction. But it does not erase the moral debt accumulated during eighteen months of blocked funding. The children who died because vaccination windows were missed are not brought back by a Senate committee statement. The epidemic surveillance gaps created by closed CDC offices in Ituri are not closed by a policy change in Washington. The trust that beneficiary countries placed in the United States as a reliable partner will require years of consistent action to rebuild.

The lesson is not primarily about vaccines or thimerosal. It is about accountability. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. held a position of enormous power over global health and used it in a way that condemned hundreds of thousands of children to death. That decision must have consequences. Not to satisfy a desire for retribution, but because the next person who occupies that position must understand what is at stake. And the institutions that allowed this to happen must be rebuilt so it cannot happen again.

By Maxime Marquette, columnist

Columnist's transparency note

Method and positioning

This article is based on data published by Truthout, Gavi, the Pandemic Center at Brown University, and the Center for Policy Impact in Global Health at Duke University. The figures cited — 600,000 estimated deaths, $600 million blocked, 14 percent of vaccines containing thimerosal — come directly from primary sources and statements by named experts. No figure is invented or extrapolated without attribution.

Limits and uncertainties

The estimate of 600,000 deaths is a projection by Seth Berkley based on Gavi's epidemiological modeling. Epidemiological projections carry an inherent margin of uncertainty. The figure revised downward from 1.2 million illustrates that Gavi partially mitigated the damage. Rubio's June 2, 2026 statement had not yet resulted in a confirmed fund release at the time this article was written.

Sources

Primary sources

Truthout — US Turnaround on International Vaccines Comes Too Late for Hundreds of Thousands — June 11, 2026

Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance — Impact and progress reports 2024–2026

WHO — Global child mortality report 2025

Secondary sources

Washington Post — Rubio wrests back Gavi funding control from RFK Jr. — June 3, 2026

Foreign Policy — The Global Health Wreckage of the Trump Administration — June 8, 2026

The Guardian — 600,000 children face death as US vaccine funding blocked by RFK Jr. — June 9, 2026