David Miliband warns rise of ‘alternative facts’ threatens global vaccination campaign | Global development

The emergence of “alternative facts” and the end of automatic deference to doctors pose threats to global efforts to vaccinate vulnerable children. David Miliband warned.

The former British foreign secretary, who now heads the International Rescue Committee (IRC), gave a speech hours earlier Inauguration of Donald Trump as the 47th President of the USA.

Changes in the way the United States interacts with the rest of the world will not only potentially hamper efforts to provide health services and humanitarian assistance to the most vulnerable, but could also affect the extent of conflict and other disasters worldwide, said Miliband.

Trump’s election as US Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jrhas repeated Spreading conspiracy theories on the subject of vaccination. Trump has repeated some of this information, including suggesting that Kennedy will examine the widely debunked myth linking autism and vaccinations.

Any increase in anti-vaccination sentiment could complicate the IRC’s work, Miliband said. “The information ecosystem has moved from a situation where medical opinion is overly respected – which brings its own challenges – to an environment where you can have your own facts or alternative facts, and that is a very dangerous situation .”

Vaccine skeptics often ask authorities to “prove negative results – and that’s not possible,” he said.

The IRC runs the Reaching Every Child in Humanitarian Settings (Reach) project, which aims to provide vaccines to children living in fragile or conflict-affected areas where government is partially or absent.

Miliband spoke to the Guardian at the IRC’s London office after recently returning from a visit to a Reach project in Ethiopia. This month, the IRC announced that 8 million vaccine doses had been administered to children under five living in hard-to-reach parts of Ethiopia, Sudan, South Sudan and Somalia.

He said he asked women near the Eritrean border if they were happy with the vaccinations and they told him “of course.” The women also dismissed questions about whether people in the community said vaccinations could be dangerous, saying they had “seen the benefit.”

But he said he was “concerned by the fact that there can be rumors about who is doing what, what various NGOs are doing.” […] so that the information ecosystem can be used in dangerous ways.”

He added: “I think the lesson from these very challenging circumstances is that you have to be extremely transparent, you have to be extremely local and you have to be very clear that it’s about pointing and not just “It’s the telling that counts.” very important to win arguments. So show that you employ local people, that you are transparent about your data and that you are clear about your practices. And you have to show the benefits.”

Miliband did not comment on the potential impact of RFK Jr’s appointment before his appointment Confirmation hearing.

“We don’t know how he will position himself vis-à-vis the US CDC’s expertise [Centers for Disease Control and Prevention] and other. I think we have to let him speak for himself,” Miliband said. “There’s obviously a lot of history. He has said a lot and done a lot in the last five to ten years. But I think we have to give him the chance to build his footing […] But obviously the impact of American decisions, not to mention American culture, is global, not just local.”

The new US government has also announced the country’s approval Withdrawal from funding the World Health Organizationand that is also expected Reintroduction of a “global gag” Rule restricting access to reproductive health care.

If the U.S. retreats from its historic role as a leading funder of global health and humanitarian work, “that means fewer people will be vaccinated.” That means fewer people will be treated for malnutrition. It certainly means that fewer women and girls are receiving sexual and reproductive health support. And of course that involves treating symptoms – then the question becomes how U.S. foreign policy posture contributes to or reduces conflicts and other disasters around the world. So there is an impact on the US on both the supply side and the demand side.”

As a U.S.-based organization, the IRC has not previously been affected by the “global gag,” which prevents foreign organizations that receive U.S. health funds from providing abortion advocacy or services, even if they receive money from other sources. There are fears — based on the Project 2025 playbook, whose authors include some new Trump officials — that the rule could be expanded to include domestic organizations.

Again, Miliband said he was willing to “wait and see,” but added: “We will always follow the law.”

While much of the aid sector is starting to Talk about the change Power out of the hands of international NGOs and into local organizations, Miliband, who faced it himself Verifying his IRC salarynow more than $1 million (£810,000) a year, said he viewed this as “a wrong decision”. In Ethiopia, he said, 948 of the 950 IRC staff are Ethiopians.

“An international NGO brings expertise, experience, research results, comparative practice and an infrastructure of systems,” he said. He described the partnerships between the ICR and local NGOs as “a marriage of expertise.”

“There is the expertise of an international NGO and there is the expertise of local people, local NGOs,” he said. “Of course there should be a principle of subsidiarity. They want to decide and do things at the lowest possible level for legitimacy, security and efficiency.

“But I don’t think that if you said to a local NGO, ‘Go, you’re on your own, there would be here and support that an international NGO would bring.”