‘The goal is to disassemble public health’: experts warn against US turn to vaccine skepticism

The measles, mumps and rubella vaccine is a crucial tool for preventing infection in the US population. Photograph: Annie Rice/EPA

As vaccine hesitancy increases in the US, isolated, tight-knit and religious communities have frequently been at the center of high-profile outbreaks.

Such is the case in west Texas, where a rural community is the center of an expanding measles outbreak that has already claimed the lives of two Americans – the first deaths from the disease in nearly a decade.