Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has said that the U.S., under his leadership, is limiting the spread of measles better than any other country in the world.
His most recent comments came Friday as he testified in his first congressional hearings in months, in which he sought to defend a more than 12% proposed cut to his department鈥檚 budget.
THE CLAIM: 鈥淭he measles outbreak is not an American phenomenon. It is global. It鈥檚 happening all over the world. And we鈥檝e done better under my leadership than any country in the world in limiting it.鈥�
THE FACTS: Measles is , and other countries have seen bigger outbreaks in 2025 and 2026 than the U.S., including neighboring and . Overseas, logged higher case counts than the Americas did in 2025, and an ongoing outbreak in .
But the U.S. is getting worse, not better, at protecting people against the spread of measles, because vaccination rates have been falling. And public health experts have been critical of Kennedy鈥檚 response to the rise in measles cases because, instead of forcefully advocating for more vaccinations, he has been them, and .
Declining vaccination rates have helped fuel the nation’s biggest surge in measles cases since 1991. And the 2026 case count is already trending higher than . The U.S. is on the verge of losing .
Measles is so contagious that it takes a to prevent outbreaks. Nationally, vaccination rates have fallen in recent years from 95.2% in the 2019-20 school year to 92.5% in 2024-25, from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
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