Vaccines funded by Bill Gates did not cause autism to increase in Vietnam

A Facebook video with more than 10,000 likes falsely suggests autism is caused by vaccines, and that a vaccine programme supported by Bill Gates introduced autism to Vietnam.

Autism was first recognised as a condition in Vietnam in the late 90s, but this does not mean it did not exist there before.

In a fact check on the same video published in 2023, AFP quoted a professor named Dr Cong Tran, who said he’d worked with autistic people in Vietnam who were in their 30s and 40s. He said that therefore there were autistic people in the country before Mr Gates’s foundation first donated to the GAVI vaccine fund in 2000.

The idea that vaccines cause autism is a longstanding myth that has been debunked many times. You can read more about this in our previous fact check on the same claim.