Aug 30 (Reuters) - U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders on Saturday called on Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to resign, days after a senior public health official was fired and four others resigned in disputes over Kennedy’s unorthodox opposition to vaccines.

Sanders, an independent senator from Vermont who caucuses with Democrats, wrote in a New York Times guest essay that Kennedy is “endangering the health of the American people now and into the future.”

This week, Kennedy ousted the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Susan Monarez, less than a month into her tenure, deepening disarray at the nation’s main public health agency. Monarez had refused to adopt new limitations on the availability of some vaccines urged by Kennedy, saying they went against scientific evidence.

Four other senior CDC officials resigned in protest, citing anti-vaccine policies and misinformation promoted by Kennedy and his team; hundreds of their colleagues walked out of the CDC’s headquarters in Atlanta in support of the departing leaders.

Sanders, the ranking member of the Senate’s health committee and an opponent of Kennedy’s confirmation earlier this year, wrote that Kennedy ousted Monarez because she refused “to act as a rubber stamp for his dangerous policies.”