(3 Feb 2025)
RESTRICTIONS SUMMARY:
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Apia – 3 February 2025
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1. SOUNDBITE (English) Dr. Alec Ekeroma, Samoa’s Director-General of Health:
"My response to that was that, it’s a total fabrication of what had actually happened. There was only one postmortem being performed, and I was informed that by the former Director General of Health. And, there’s no records of any other tissues sent to New Zealand or swabs or specimens. There was a huge teams, international teams in Samoa during that time because we called for help when the epidemic went out and killing people. And so, there were doctors here from all over the world, including Australia and New Zealand. And, those doctors were there when they were treating patients and they could tell it’s measles. You know, if it looks like measles and it smells like measles, it’s measles that killed those people. So there was no need for us to send specimens anywhere. So, what Kennedy said is a complete lie."
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2. SOUNDBITE (English) Dr. Alec Ekeroma, Samoa’s Director-General of Health:
"At his hearing last week, he talked about specimens sent to New Zealand showing that the people, the 83 people may not have died from measles. I mean, that’s huge denial of the fact that there were so many doctors in the country at the time who treated those people with measles and, and were there when people were dying, from the measles. So, he’s continued to actually deny the good things about vaccines. He continues to deny the fact that, you know, there was a measles epidemic in Samoa killing so many people. And so, therefore, he’s going to be a danger actually to public health all around the world, including Samoa."
++BLACK FRAMES++
3. SOUNDBITE (English) Dr. Alec Ekeroma, Samoa’s Director-General of Health:
"Not very sure why he came, but he came at a time when there was a lot of vaccine hesitancy. You know, people were actually hesitant about giving their kids vaccines, so he came at that time, and he met with anti-vaxxers."
++BLACK FRAMES++
4. SOUNDBITE (English) Dr. Alec Ekeroma, Samoa’s Director-General of Health:
"If he’s going to be appointed, then we will have to actually discuss around the Pacific as to how we’re going to try to neutralize his influence in the region, just to make sure that anti-vaccination activity is not increased."
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STORYLINE:
Samoa’s top health official on Monday denounced as “a complete lie” remarks that Robert F. Kennedy Jr. made during his bid to become U.S. health secretary.
Samoa Director-General of Health Dr. Alec Ekeroma rejected Kennedy’s claim that some who died in Samoa’s 2019 measles epidemic didn’t have the disease.
"We don’t know what was killing them," Kennedy said during tense U.S. Senate hearings last week on whether he should oversee the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, suggesting that the cause of the 83 deaths — mostly of children under age 5 — was unclear.
"It’s a total fabrication,” Ekeroma told The Associated Press.
U.S. senators grilled Kennedy last week over his 2019 Samoa trip, accusing him of downplaying his role in the epidemic.
The outbreak devastated the Pacific island nation in 2019, killing 83 people in a population of 200,000. Vaccination rates were historically low because of poor public health management and the 2018 deaths of two babies whose vaccines were incorrectly prepared, prompting fears that the MMR immunization was unsafe before the nature of the error was discovered.
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