Ziekenhuizen zien ziektes terugkeren nu vaccinaties afnemen

Hospitals See Diseases Return as Vaccination Rates Decline

By Maggie Astor and Dani Blum
June 2, 2026

Doctors across the United States say they are seeing more cases of serious, sometimes life-threatening diseases that had long been largely controlled thanks to vaccination. These include whooping cough and bacterial infections that can cause pneumonia or meningitis.

The concern among doctors follows a resurgence of measles in the United States. That resurgence is being fueled in part by distrust of vaccines, which grew during the Covid pandemic and which critics say was also reinforced by Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and President Trump. Public health experts have long viewed measles as a warning sign: because measles is exceptionally contagious, it is often the first disease to rise again when vaccination rates fall in general. It may therefore be a sign of what is still to come.

For some of these diseases, national figures show clear and significant increases in recent years. For other conditions, the increases are smaller, or are so far mainly signals from doctors on the ground that have not yet been clearly confirmed by public statistics.

Although most children recover, these diseases are not harmless. Many children require prolonged hospital stays. Some infections can be fatal.

Dr. Meghan Hofto, a pediatric hospitalist at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, is one of the doctors who says she is once again seeing more diseases that she used to encounter only rarely. This year, she and her colleagues treated more children than usual with persistent diarrhea. A child with an ordinary stomach virus might need one day of intravenous fluids, but these patients had to be hospitalized for three or four days.

The cause was rotavirus. This infection used to cause tens of thousands of hospitalizations each year in the United States, but it was largely pushed back by vaccines introduced 20 years ago. Those vaccines were so effective that Dr. Hofto could remember only four or five children with rotavirus over the past decade. Now she had already treated about that many this year, and none of them had been vaccinated.

Dr. Jessica Kirk, a pediatric hospitalist in Fairhope, Alabama, recently treated an unvaccinated toddler who was admitted with pneumonia caused by two simultaneous infections: Haemophilus influenzae and Streptococcus pneumoniae. Routine childhood vaccines can protect against S. pneumoniae and against a common form of H. influenzae, but vaccination against both conditions has declined in recent years.

The child Dr. Kirk treated for both infections needed antibiotics and oxygen to get through the illness.

Some of these conditions can lead to serious complications. Infections with H. influenzae and S. pneumoniae can cause sepsis, meningitis and pneumonia. Dr. Hofto said she had treated infants aged 4 to 6 weeks with whooping cough who sometimes appeared to be doing well, but after a coughing fit suddenly stopped breathing. “It is difficult to know when they are safe to go home,” she said.

Many children with whooping cough do not have parents who are opposed to vaccines, she said. They are simply still too young to have been vaccinated. But because the disease has been circulating more in recent years as vaccination rates decline, these young babies are also at greater risk. Last year, more than 28,000 cases were reported, compared with about 7,000 in 2023.

Andrew Nixon, a spokesman for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, said in an emailed statement: “We reject the claim that giving Americans transparent information about the benefits and risks of medical products undermines public health.”

Even when the worst does not happen, emergency physicians sometimes have to perform more invasive tests on unvaccinated children with high fever, including a lumbar puncture, in order to rule out life-threatening infections against which vaccinated children are protected. Infections such as H. influenzae and S. pneumoniae can be difficult to recognize, because at first they may resemble less serious illnesses before rapidly leading to complications. And because near-universal vaccination prevented these diseases for so long, many doctors have little experience diagnosing them.

In some cases, the alternative to invasive testing is to give unvaccinated children stronger antibiotics right away than doctors would otherwise use. Those medicines can have more side effects, according to Dr. Robin Harrison and Dr. Taylor Rosenbaum, pediatric hospitalists in Miami.

Several doctors also said they were seeing a growing number of adults who refused tetanus vaccination for themselves, and parents who refused it for their children after injuries such as dog bites or cuts from dirty objects. About 1 in 10 people who contract tetanus die from it. A full vaccination series is highly effective at preventing infection.

Dr. Sonali Meyer, an emergency physician in Minnesota, said she treated a patient last year who refused a tetanus vaccine after cutting open his hand.

“Big Pharma does not need my money,” she recalled the patient saying. Another patient refused a tetanus vaccine with the words: “I know you get paid more the more shots you give, but no thanks.”

With each passing year, vaccine hesitancy seems to be expanding into new areas, doctors say.

Two anesthesiologists said that, starting around 2022 or 2023, they occasionally saw patients who would not consent to blood transfusions before surgery because they did not want blood from vaccinated donors. Increasing numbers of parents are also refusing to let their newborns receive vitamin K injections, which help prevent bleeding. Until recently, those injections were accepted even by many families who refused vaccines, neonatologists say.

Five doctors said they had seen brain or abdominal bleeding in babies whose parents had refused vitamin K. One baby died and another was partially paralyzed.

The influx of preventable diseases and other health risks can feel overwhelming, doctors say. So can dealing with medical misinformation repeated by some patients.

“It feels as if you are a tiny little boat and a giant tidal wave is coming at you,” said Dr. Erin Charles, a regional pediatric hospitalist at Seattle Children’s Hospital. “And maybe you can convince one family here or there.”

Many parents continue to refuse vaccines even after their child has been hospitalized with a disease that could have been prevented by vaccination, doctors say. Dr. Kirk said she had never experienced a parent in such a situation saying they had changed their mind and would have the child vaccinated according to the standard schedule from then on. Dr. Hofto said she could sometimes persuade families, but often could not.

Some “can view the illness as an isolated experience, especially if their child ultimately recovers,” Dr. Hofto said.

Doctors say they fear that, as vaccination rates continue to fall, diseases that now appear only sporadically will become more common.

Dr. Rosenbaum said she warns the residents she trains that they may have to learn together how to treat diseases that she herself never saw during her training because of vaccines.

For many of those diseases, “it will probably first be a small increase,” she said. “Until suddenly it goes very fast.”