Doctors say CDC is being too cautious with AFM illness

LOS ANGELES – Lamay Axton watched in horror as her granddaughter Cambria stumbled and toppled over as she ran into the kitchen of their house. The 2-year-old tried to stand back up, but couldn’t.

“Her little legs just fell from under her, like a marionette doll,” said Axton, who lives in Menifee in Riverside County.

Within hours, Cambria was unable to move her arms or her legs. Her diaphragm stopped working, so she needed machines to breathe. In September 2016, doctors determined that she had an unexplained condition called acute flaccid myelitis.

In 2014, more than 100 children in the U.S. suddenly became paralyzed and were diagnosed with the condition, which closely resembles polio. In 2016, another outbreak paralyzed even more children. Two years later, the devastating illness is back.

Federal health officials said this week that 62 cases of acute flaccid myelitis, or AFM, have been confirmed in 2018, and 65 more possible cases are being investigated. Experts at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention say they still don’t know what causes the syndrome.

But some parents and doctors say the CDC is not doing enough to address the malady. Many doctors believe the paralysis is caused by a summer virus and that the CDC’S decision to continue to call AFM a “mystery” illness is wrongly stoking fears among parents, and also stalling efforts to develop prevention strategies and treatments.

“It’s really hard to see Maipele Burns, 4, can only partially open her right hand, a result of being diagnosed at the age of 2 with acute flaccid myelitis, causing permanent paralysis in that part of her body. She was photographed at her home in Camarillo on Thursday.

these kids and know that we saw them four years ago the same way,” said Priya Duggal, an epidemiologist at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health who studies AFM. “And it’s scary to think that it might be the same in

2020, unless we make some changes now.”

In 2014, children started showing up in emergency rooms across the country unable to move an arm or a leg. Standard treatments didn’t seem to work, leaving doctors puzzled.