St. Louis Health Director Mati Hlatshwayo Davis said on Friday that she’s worried about rising cases of measles and other preventable diseases as immunization rates fall among Missouri children.
During an online media briefing sponsored by the Infectious Diseases Society of America, Hlathswayo Davis, an infectious disease physician, said vaccination rates among Missouri kindergarteners had fallen many percentage points in the past five years.
The director’s concerns come as a measles outbreak has sickened more than 150 people in Texas.
Doctors have criticized newly confirmed U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s response to the outbreak. Earlier this week, Kennedy issued a written statement about the Texas outbreak that touted vaccine’s importance to keeping communities safe but also called the choice to immunize children a “personal” decision.
Federal officials are beginning to take a more hands-off approach to immunizations and other public health guidance, Hlatshwayo Davis said during the briefing.
The federal government has also been slow to issue guidance on how to test for and prevent avian flu, which has affected millions of birds in Missouri, she said.
“We are seeing trusted places that the community leans into already making adjustments,” she said. “And now is the time for us to have more information that is standardized and clear when things like this occur.”
According to the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services, vaccination rates for polio, measles, hepatitis and other diseases among kindergarteners in Missouri have decreased since at least 2020.
DHSS data shows 10% of the state’s kindergarteners have not been vaccinated against measles. That’s a drop of four percentage points since 2020.
One in 10 kindergarten students is unvaccinated against measles, and close to one-fourth of parochial school students in St. Louis are unvaccinated, Hlatshwayo Davis said.
School nurses have brought up worries following the Texas measles outbreak, she said.
“Most had never, ever seen a case of measles,” the director said. “So it's very important to understand that we have a workforce that has largely not experienced this, and we need all hands on deck.”
Hlatshwayo Davis also mentioned concerns that federal budget cuts could affect the city’s health department. More than half the department’s budget relies on grant funding, much of which comes from federal sources, she said.
