Trump's targeting of health keeps people hungry, sick and less likely to fight back

The backsliding on public health both in the US and internationally is a political act, and we must treat it as such, writes Dr Suzanne Crowe

US health secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr has campaigned against childhood immunisations, persistently linking vaccines to autism. 

A decade ago, my older son went through a period of crippling anxiety at bedtime. He had seen a movie about the Second World War, with images of children suffering from disease and malnutrition, and he couldn’t stop worrying that it would happen to him. 

For months, I lay beside him at night, reassuring him by listing all the reasons why our world was a safer place. I told him those scenes were in the past and there was less illness and war now, until he eventually drifted off to sleep.