Geneva, August 12 (QNA) - The World Health Organization (WHO) affirmed today that the combined measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine was safe and does not cause autism, saying that US President Donald Trump's changes to childhood vaccination guidelines in the United States run counter to decades of scientific evidence. 
WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said the scientific evidence was conclusive that vaccines, including the MMR vaccine, were safe and do not cause autism. He added that vaccination policy should be based on a rigorous, independent and transparent review of the best available scientific evidence rather than political influence.
Tedros expressed WHO's concern that recent changes to US vaccination policy were not consistent with decades of accumulated evidence on when children are most vulnerable to disease, when vaccines provide the strongest protection, how many doses are required, and which vaccines can safely be administered together.
US President Donald Trump signed an executive order two days ago calling for a review of vaccination requirements for school attendance and reiterated his call for splitting the combined MMR vaccine into three separate shots. The official White House order recommended that states review their school vaccination requirements and called for MMR to be administered as three separate single-disease shots once such products become available domestically. (QNA)