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The deadly Samoan measles outbreak in 2019 has been raised during the confirmation hearings for Robert F. Kennedy jnr in the US Senate.

Kennedy is US President Donald Trump’s controversial pick to lead the Department of Health and Human Services.

He has been accused of promoting mistrust of vaccines while visiting Samoa in 2019, with the measles outbreak on the island killing 83 people, many of them young children.

Senator Ron Wyden accused Kennedy of contributing to the deaths by “spreading lies” on the island.

Kennedy told the Senate his trip to Samoa was not related to vaccines, but instead to help digitise health records.

He said the vaccination rate on the island was already low before he arrived.

“I went there for nothing to do with vaccines. I never gave any public statements about vaccines,” he said.

“You will not find a single Samoan who says I didn’t get a vaccination due to Robert Kennedy.”

However, following the trip, Kennedy wrote that it had been organised by a local vaccine critic.

New Zealand vaccinologist Helen Petousis-Harris told RNZ’s Morning Report there would have been people in Samoa who absolutely did not get vaccinated because of Kennedy’s influence.

“There has been an active opposition to vaccines in Samoa for many years, and that disinformation source is RFK and his organisation,” Petousis-Harris said.

“Yes, I think you can directly lay some responsibility on that organisation.”

In 2019, Petousis-Harris said Kennedy had weakened an “already fragile trust” in Samoa.

“A person who has the status of RFK junior just, I guess, further amplifies what those local anti-vaccine advocates had been saying,” she said.

“And there’s a big price to pay, isn’t there? I mean, these were children’s lives.”

Kennedy said if he was confirmed to lead the Department of Health and Human Services he would not interfere with people’s rights to get vaccinated for measles and polio.

– RNZ