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Dr. Kim Mulvihill reporting Many of you have written asking about the health of the FLDS children. We've reported that some of the children have been sick and a few may have been hospitalized.
What are the medical practices within the group? Dr. David Blodgett is director of public health for the southern Utah region. He said this is a very difficult community to help in terms of public health because it's a very closed community, and they're actually resistant to public health efforts. In fact, he said the public health clinic in the Colorado City/Hildale region was closed because no one was using it.
It raises lots of questions for the children of this sect in terms of what is a religious view versus good health. One that might surprise many people is the group's view on medical care. They have no opposition to traditional medicine.
They have physicians in their community who they get help from, but because it is such a closed community, many diseases that occur are not reported to the health department, making it all the more difficult to really know their state of health.
There's a lot of secrecy, and that secrecy makes it harder to try and help this community.
So what does this isolation mean to public health? An example is they have a raw milk dairy, and Dr. Blodgett said about once a year, they have an outbreak of some type. The outbreak can be hazardous to children and pregnant women. We don't know about that, we don't hear about that, and it would be handled differently if it was happening in the valley. We'd be saying don't drink this milk, but we don't know about that down there.
And a lot of people have asked if the children are vaccinated? The view of the sect tends to be don't get vaccinated, but it's not a blanket policy. So some people do have their children vaccinated. But what that means is that we kind of don't know how the children will do now that they're out in more general populations. It could spell trouble if they are exposed to certain diseases that could have been prevented.
E-mail: drkim@ksl.com
