Holding with Kennedy’s advice, measles patients turn to unstable treatments

Struggles to limit an measles epidemic in western Texas, public health officials are increasingly concerned that residents are based on unstable treatments approved by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the Secretary of Health and postponing the doctor’s visits.

Hospitals and officials sounded alarm this week, issuing a notice explaining what measles symptoms justify immediate medical care and emphasize the importance of timely treatment.

‘I am worried that we have children and parents who take all these other medicines and then delay care, “said Katherine Wells, Public Health Director in Lubbock, Texas, where many of the most sick children in this home have been hospitalized.

Some serious ill children had been given alternative treatments such as the oil of the garden, he added. “If so, so sick and have low oxygen levels, it should have been in the hospital one day or two earlier,” he said.

The developing epidemic has spread to nearly 260 People in Texas. So far, 34 patients have been hospitalized and a child has died. In the neighboring counties of New Mexico, the virus has become ill 35 and was hospitalized. Two cases in Oklahoma have also been linked to the outburst.

Texas health officials believe that the actual number of cases is much higher. In total, there were 301 cases of measles in the United States this year, the highest number since 2019, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported on Friday.

In his first public statements about the outburst, Mr Kennedy faced a strong reaction to minimizing the situation, saying he was not “unusual” and falsely claiming that many people were hospitalized there were “mainly for quarantine”.

In the coming weeks, Mr. Kennedy changed his approach, offering a tacit composition of vaccines for people in Western Texas, while promoting unproven therapies such as Gadu liver oil, which has vitamin A and forcing “almost miraculous”.

There is no such cure for measles, only drugs to manage symptoms. Vaccination is the most effective way to prevent infection.

While doctors will sometimes administer high doses of vitamin A in a hospital to help manage measles cases, there is no reliable evidence that supplements are effective in treating or preventing measles.

Experts have also noted that antibiotics, which fight bacterial infections, can be used to treat secondary infections, but do not stop the measles itself, which is a virus.

In Gaines County, Texas, the focus of the measles Estonia, alternative medicine has always been popular. Many in the large Mennonite community in the area, where most of the measles cases have gathered, avoid interacting with the medical system and maintaining a long tradition of natural therapies.

In recent weeks, pharmacies in West Texas have struggled to hold the bottles of vitamin A pills and olive oil supplements from liver on shelves.

And this week, doctors at Seminole Memorial Hospital, located in the center of Gaines County, observed that the number of patients who come for measles symptoms suddenly fell. Those who appeared were more ill than the patients who saw in previous weeks.

Even while the cases in the community have increased, Dr. Leila Myrick, a hospital, said he had performed half of the measles test number, compared to those last week.

She was worried that her patients were opposed to a mile away from the hospital in an emerging clinic, where a doctor from a neighboring city had been removed alternative treatments, such as liver oil and vitamin C.

The doctor, Dr. Ben Edwards, is known in the area for the production of podcasts that often discuss the dangers of vaccines and for his Lubbock wellness clinic, which rejects the central principles of medicine, such as the idea that germs cause certain diseases.

In an interview with Fox News, Mr Kennedy said he had spoken to Dr. Edwards (who mistakenly called Dr. Ed Benjamin) and learned “what works on the ground”.

In an email broadcast via an employee, Dr. Edwards confirmed that he had spoken to Mr Kennedy for about 15 minutes in what he described as a “information collection” phone call. Dr. Edwards refused to speak directly with the New York Times.

In the coming days, hundreds of people from the Mennonite community are lined up in improvised Dr. Edwards, held behind a local health food store, said Tina Siemens, who helped organize the event.

Mrs Siemens said that people looking for treatment for active measles infections and those who hoped to prevent someone were present.

To get enough supplements for the clinic, Dr. Edwards had recruited one of his patients, a pilot, to fly to Scottsdale, Ariz., And to get almost a thousand bottles of vitamin C supplements and the cod liver, both as a lemon drink, Sullivan.

“How much do you have in stock and how fast could you get it?” Mr Sullivan reminded Dr. Edwards by asking.

The treatments were free, said Mrs Siemens. Members of the defense of children’s health, a non-profit anti-vaccination agency that Mr Kennedy helped find himself before becoming a Health Secretary, created a online donation page that has raised more than $ 16,000 to help cover the costs.

Symptoms of measles are often resolved on their own within a few weeks. But in rare cases, the virus can cause pneumonia, making it difficult for patients, especially children, get oxygen to their lungs. There could also be brain edema, which can cause constant problems, such as blindness, deafness and mental disabilities. Both complications can be fatal.

During this epidemic, hospitalized children with pneumonia had to be rescued, said Ms. Wells, Health Director Lubbock. Under these circumstances, timely care can mean the difference between life and death.

Unstoppable treatments have for decades that have destroyed the measles more lethal, said Patsy Stinchfield, a direct president of the National Foundation for infectious diseases.

He worked as a hospital nurse in Minnesota during measles epidemic in 1989 when he killed many children. Two of them arrived at her hospital in critical condition after their parents had their tendency Traditional therapeutic treatments.

“They keep their child at home too long, and they try these treatments at home,” he said. ‘They went straight from ER to the Intensive Care Unit and died. ”