Only 15 of 194 countries give the measles shot alone. Trump wants the U.S. to join them.

Only 15 of the World Health Organization's 194 member states give children a stand-alone measles shot. If the United States follows the childhood vaccine order President Trump signed Monday, the country would join that small group, not Europe, as the administration has claimed.

The executive order calls for reducing the number of vaccines recommended for all U.S. children and splitting the combined measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) shot into three separate single-disease doses. WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, speaking at a Wednesday press conference, called the policy "contradictory to the best available science." He added that "vaccines, including the MMR vaccine, are safe, and do not cause autism" and that "delaying vaccines or separating doses unnecessarily does not make vaccinations safer and can leave children unprotected."

A STAT News analysis of country-by-country schedules found that 179 of the WHO's 194 member states use the combined MMR shot, putting the United States, under the order's preferences, alongside Denmark rather than its European peers. Brigitte Giersing, who heads WHO's vaccine research and policy unit, gave the data at the same press conference.

The order does not directly rewrite the immunization schedule. It tells Health and Human Services to study the shift and instructs the Attorney General to challenge state school-entry mandate laws. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has called the order "gold standard science". The HHS task force has roughly 90 days to present a plan, setting an early-November checkpoint.