Amid a Growing Measles Outbreak, Doctors Worry RFK is Sending the Wrong Message
upstart writes:
Amid a growing measles outbreak, doctors worry RFK is sending the wrong message:
[...] Two people have now died in the growing measles outbreak in west Texas and New Mexico.
New Mexico Health officials on Thursday confirmed the death of an unvaccinated adult who tested positive for measles. The first death was a school-age child in Gaines County, Texas last week.
News of a second death comes as infectious disease doctors worry that the federal government's messaging about the outbreak is putting more emphasis on treatments like vitamin A than on vaccination, even as misinformation about some of these treatments is spreading online.
Those concerns come in the wake of recent comments made by Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Kennedy addressed the growing measles outbreak in an editorial for FOX News published on Sunday, also posted on the HHS website.
While mentioning the value of vaccination for community immunity, Kennedy said "the decision to vaccinate is a personal one." He emphasized treatment for measles, saying that vitamin A can "dramatically" reduce deaths from the disease. In an interview with FOX News Tuesday, he said Texas doctors are giving steroids and cod liver oil to their measles patients and "getting very, very, good results."
In his editorial, he said good nutrition is "a best defense against most chronic and infectious illnesses." That emphasis on nutrition and vitamin A to treat measles is concerning some infectious disease doctors.
"Mentions of cod liver oil and vitamins [are] just distracting people away from what the single message should be, which is to increase the vaccination rate, " said Dr. Amesh Adalja, an infectious disease physician and senior scholar with the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security.
While vitamin A can play a role in preventing severe disease, discussion of vitamins, "doesn't replace the fact that measles is a preventable disease. And really, the way to deal with a measles outbreak is to vaccinate people against measles," says Dr. Adam Ratner, a member of the infectious disease committee of the American Academy of Pediatrics.
Kennedy did acknowledge that measles is highly contagious and that it poses health risks, especially to people who are not vaccinated. He said vaccines not only protect individual children from measles, but also protect people who can't be vaccinated. But he didn't strongly encourage people to get their children vaccinated - which is usually a key part of the public health response during an outbreak.
In 2019, when a measles outbreak was raging in the U.S., then health secretary Alex Azar came out with a statement strongly supporting vaccination and warning of the risks of under-vaccination.
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