Anti-vaccine group filed complaints against doctors who treated girls who died of measles in Texas

The six-year-old girl had spent weeks ill at home after contracting measles. By the time she was taken to a children’s hospital in Lubbock, Texas, she had developed severe complications and was struggling to breathe.

Hospital staff put the unvaccinated child on a ventilator. They also gave her intravenous fluids and antibiotics for possible bacterial infections.

Her condition worsened. She suffered cardiac arrest, and doctors could not revive her. She died of measles at the hospital.

Her death came during an outbreak in west Texas, where Children’s Health Defense said it had helped prompt complaints against physicians who treated two unvaccinated girls who died during the outbreak.

The group was formerly led by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who is now the US health secretary. Kennedy has publicly questioned the reported measles death toll.

He wrote on X that deaths from measles in Pennsylvania might have been 'altogether fabricated'.

Kennedy later acknowledged a coroner’s finding that measles had caused one of the Pennsylvania deaths.

Measles had been declared eliminated in the United States in 2000. The country now faces a resurgence, with falling confidence in vaccination and misleading claims about vaccines contributing to outbreaks.

Outbreaks in West Texas and New Mexico have reached nearly 300 cases. The US measles count neared 1,200 cases as of reporting.

Two unvaccinated people have died from measles-related causes in the West Texas and New Mexico outbreak region.

Pennsylvania has recorded four measles deaths since mid-August: two infants who were too young to have been vaccinated, an unvaccinated 40-year-old woman and an unvaccinated 18-year-old.

The 40-year-old woman, who died in Jefferson County, Pennsylvania, had been active before she caught the virus, cooking for her family and cleaning the house. Measles killed her in about a week.

Measles is caused by a highly contagious airborne virus, spread when an infected person breathes, sneezes or coughs. Vaccines can prevent it, yet the disease kills about one to three of every 1,000 children it infects.