The day after attending the funeral of a non -vaccinated child who died of measles, Health Minister Robert F. Kennedy Jr. It will launch a tour through southwestern states on Monday, promoting initiatives that emphasize nutrition and lifestyle as tools to combat the disease.
Make America Healthy Again, who will get Mr. Kennedy through departments of Utah, Arizona and New Mexico, aims to draw attention to some of the secretary’s common interests, but the first day is scheduled to end with a very controversial. Public drink.
The tour comes as the questions are increasing for the federal government’s response to an measles epidemic in West Texas that has spread to other states. The death of an unpaid 8 -year -old girl there last week was the second confirmed death from measles in a decade in the United States. Mr. Kennedy attended the girl’s funeral on Sunday and met her family before continuing Utah.
Mr Kennedy’s staff said that during three days he was planning to visit many health centers, including the “teaching of the Medical School” to train students in managing chronic diseases using dietary choices. He is scheduled to meet with leaders of the Navajo Nation to discuss the cultural and logistical challenges of providing high quality health care to racial groups and to visit a charter school in New Mexico that “incorporates healthy eating and physical life”.
During his first months, Mr Kennedy’s policies have been unfolded with Great Brouhaha, but the secretary himself was a relatively low profile, especially for an employee with his reputation. The White House encouraged Mr Kennedy to adopt a more public approach to his role, but the time of his first major impulse in the country will require the careful line around the most apparent issue on the table.
Experts in Public Health say that the measles epidemic, which has now contaminated about 500 people in western Texas, is driven by low vaccination rates. Mr Kennedy, who is famous for the safety of vaccines, shifted his rhetoric after the young girl’s funeral, placing X: “The most effective way to avoid measles from spreading is the MMR vaccine”.
It was the most definitive statement made by validation vaccines as a preventive tool, but some public health experts were frustrated that it did not explicitly recommend that parents were vaccinated their children and did not say that the vaccines were safe. And several hours later he published in X again, praising two doctors who use unstable treatments to take care of hundreds of measles children.
For months, Mr Kennedy stressed that vaccination was a matter of parental choice and encouraged people to consider unproven shapes such as Vitamin A, which could lead to toxicity and suggested that bad lifestyle choices were playing among the victims.
Nutrition and diet “do not give any benefit to prevent measles infection,” said Dr. Michael Mina, an epidemiologist and immunologist who has studied measles.
Healthy foods and exercise can “help reduce the consequences of many infections, including measles, but will not prevent them,” he added. “Prevention is by far the best medicine.”
Mr Kennedy is likely to address further questions about measles during a Monday afternoon press conference at Salt Lake City, although the event aims to focus on a completely different issue: Fluoring drinking water.
Mr Kennedy urged states and municipalities to remove fluoride from drinking water before the 2024 elections. The American Dental Union said water fluoridation reduces dental decomposition by at least 25 % in children and adults.
The fluoride discussion extends back to the 1950s, when conspiracy theories were swirling around whether the practice was a communist plot to cause brain damage. Some studies indicate that excessive exposure to fluoride – at levels twice the amount recommended by the environmental protection service – could harm infants. Disease Control and Prevention Centers have listened to fluoridation as one of the 10 major 20th -century public health achievements.
