FORT WAYNE, Ind. -- State health officials want leaders of the Faith Assembly church to modify their stance against medical care so death rates among church members will decline.
If negotiations fail, the health officials said they will seek changes in the law to protect the people at risk -- mostly newborns and expectant mothers, the Fort Wayne News-Sentinel reported in a copyright article Tuesday.
The Faith Assembly is a fundamentalist church based at Wilmot in Noble County. There have been numerous reports of deaths among members who shunned medical care or sought it too late.
'The message we want to hand out is we want to help them,' said Dr. Craig Spence, a consultant for the Indiana State Board of Health.
Spence is working on a state investigation which followed the report of 52 deaths in six states, detailed in a series of articles in the News-Sentinel in May.
Spence and Dr. Ted Danielson, director of the board of health's division of maternal and child health, said death rates for Faissembly members were higher than mortality rates for mothers and infants in the general population.
Danielson said the state is urging Faith Assembly members to get medical care for all pregnant women before and during delivery, for newborns and for children up to 2 years old.
Danielson said he and Dr. Andrew Kaunitz of the federal Center for Disease Control presented their findings Friday to a church leader whom Danielson declined to identify. The physicians said they hope to meet with other Faith Assembly leaders.