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There’s a lot running in a federal government shutdown
The US government has shut down for the third time in a year after President Donald Trump refused to sign a funding bill that did not include $5.7 billion for a US-Mexico border wall. The US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) will remain closed and services will be suspended. However, CHIP and Medicaid…
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Do you have a complaint? Many just walked out
Thousands of US employees have gone on a three-day strike demanding better working conditions amid the coronavirus pandemic. Kaiser Permanente executives “kicked can down the road” at the same time that the US was hit by the pandemic, its employees said. The strike would hit hospitals, clinics and medical offices from California and Colorado to…
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There is a search for a link between asthma and RSV
A study by researchers at York University in Toronto has found that nirsevimab, which is given before the start of first respiratory syncytial virus season, can help youngsters to avoid severe lung infections that often lead to hospitalization and death. As a one-time, lower- cost option, nirsevimab should streamline administration process, while also being “highly…
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The work begins now that the treatments are here
Doctors at a US hospital have said that they don’t have any record of a retired physician reporting any respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), according to a report in the journal, “The Lancet Infectious Diseases”. This comes after a recent study revealed that just 4.3% of 937 US hospitals tests people aged 65 and older who…
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Tracking the disease in low and middle-income countries
AstraZeneca has funded an RSV surveillance dashboard run by the non-profit organisation ReSViNET, based in the Netherlands, to collect data from 20 countries. The dashboard will collect data from 20 countries on the prevalence and severity of RSV in the community. It will be important to have multiple RSV antibodies on the market to increase…
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For Indigenous infants, prevention is better than a cure
A scientist from the University of Toronto has said it was a “perfect storm” of events that created the vaccine-enhanced disease that was experienced by infants who got the RSV vaccine. The pre-fusion form of the virus is an ideal target since it can be readily neutralized by antibody binding. The antibody produced by such…
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For health equity, location is important
Scientists in the US and Costa Rica have shown that prenatal and childhood exposure to pesticides affects the health and development of rural areas. Van Wendel de Joode, a researcher at the National Center for Disaster Preparedness in Costa Rica, said poverty and inadequate education were some of the factors that contributed to environmental health…
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Discrimination has resulted in people of color being trapped in the heat islands
A study in US’ Durham, North Carolina, found temperatures in historically Black neighbourhoods were up to 10 degrees higher than in affluent areas in the city. Researchers used heat-sensing instruments and fanned out along prescribed routes to collect data on air temperature and humidity in morning, afternoon and evening. The results showed temperatures in historically…
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For health equity, location matters
A new study has found that Detroit’s air pollution is linked to asthma. It said that the city’s air quality deteriorated over time, with the levels of pollution as high as 120 micrograms per cubic metre in some areas. The study further showed that children under the age of 18 are more likely to have…
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Years of progress towards cleaning up America’s air is being wiped out by wildfire smoke
An analysis of 545 counties in 2000-2007 in the US found that the impact of air pollution control on life expectancy in the country from 2000 to 2007 was similar regardless of whether people were living in wildfire smoke particles or from other sources. “We found no significant difference in terms of longevity for people…
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The AlphaFold tool can identify the genes that cause a disease
A new tool based on the AlphaFold network that can predict when a certain sequence of genes will cause health conditions, is likely to be the best predictor in two or three years, a researcher said. AlphaMissense is a network of genes linked to health conditions, including type 2 diabetes, cystic fibrosis and sickle cell…
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The auto strike threatens a supply chain already weakened by Covid
The United Automobile Workers (UAW) has announced a strike against General Motors, Ford and Ford affiliate Stellantis on October 3. UAW President Shawn Fain has said that the union will pay the health benefits of striking workers. UAW has built up a strike fund of $835 million, enough to last about three months if all…
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The death toll has gone up due to flooding in the city of Derna
At least 3,000 bodies have been buried by Thursday morning after a flash flood in eastern Libya, the country’s Health Minister said. The floods have caused the displacement of over 30,000 people in Derna, as well as forcing many others to leave their homes in other eastern towns, the UN’s International Organization for Migration (IOM)…
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There is a correlation between eye disease and Parkinson’s
A comparative study comparing the efficacy of convolutional neural networks (CHAN) and Optical Coherence Tomography (OCT) for omic tasks with identical training and evaluation details has shown that CFP and OCT contain different levels of information. In three-year incidence prediction of ischaemic stroke,Found with OCT performs better than with OCT on both MEH-AlzEye and UK…
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Maternity care suffers as abortions Drive Obstetricians from Red States
Idaho, a state in the US, is the only jurisdiction in the country that bars abortions at any point in a pregnancy with just two exceptions. A federal judge has issued a temporary order permitting abortions in certain cases when the health of the woman is at risk. The American College of Obstetricians and obstetricians…
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Scientists are in a fight against cancer
The US National Cancer Institute (NCI) has the largest amount of grants awarded for cancer research in the world at $10.1 billion in 2018-19, according to Nature Index’s latest data. The Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York City and the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston are clear of other…
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A Texas law requiring age verification on porn sites is unconstitutional
The US federal judge who blocked a state-mandated age verification for online pornography said people will be “particularly concerned” about accessing controversial speech when the state government can log and track that access. Social media sites, however, would be exempt from the age restrictions because they likely do not meet the one-third sexual material standard,…
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The ruling was aimed at blocking the care ban
A transgender woman has filed a lawsuit against the Broome County, New York for housing her in jail consistent with her gender identity under a settlement with another transgender woman. Under the settlement with Jena Faith, the county agreed to respect an individual’s name and pronoun changes and provide gender-affirming care. Holland had filed the…
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There were more asthma sufferers in the emergency room due to the smoke
Asthma-associated emergency room visits were 17% higher than normal during the 19 days of wildfire smoke in late April and early August, according to a study by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Wildfire smoke led to about 10% more ER visits compared to other times of year. It also had lower…
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A rise in high-risk patients heading to Illinois hospitals are caused by the abortion ban
A lawsuit against the state of Texas argues that language in the medical exception is vague and confusing, causing hospitals and doctors to delay care, which harms patients. Doctors can legally provide abortions in the state only if a patient is “in danger of death or a serious risk of substantial impairment of a major…
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The lawmaker is trying to expand abortion access in Texas
Texas Governor Greg Abbott has signed a law that gives doctors leeway to provide abortions in Texas when a patient’s water breaks too early and for ectopic pregnancies. The law will allow abortions in Texas when a patient’s water break too early and for ectopic pregnancies. A lawsuit against the state argues that language in…
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850 people are still missing in Maui
A mental health official in the US state of Maui has said that the Maui wildfire was the worst mental health disaster in the state’s modern history. Maui’s chief mental health administrator, John Oliver, said that a fresh influx of mental health clinicians are being sought by state and federal officials. At least 18 people…
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The Tuohy family responded to the allegations of false adoption by Michael Oher
Michael Oher, a former US football player, has filed a lawsuit against Michael Lewis, the author of the book ‘The Blind Side’, and film producer Sean Tuohy, asking a court to dissolve the established conservatorship by Tuohys. In his petition, Oher said that the Tuohy family earned millions and profited off Oher’s name, image and…
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Lahaina isn’t suppose to burn like this any more
Native Hawaiian dry land plants are not necessarily more fire-resistant than native Hawaiian plants, Arizona State University ethnoecologistKatie Kamelamela said. The amount of dry fuel on the land is less important than how carefully land is cared for, Kamelamela added. This comes after a wildfire in Maui, Hawaii destroyed hundreds of homes and killed at…
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Pollution and fishing can help protect coral reefs, but not enough
Researchers compared data from 20 years of ocean data from the Pacific Islands Fisheries Science Center to examine how factors like wastewater runoff and fishing intensity shaped the coral reef’s response to back-to-back coral bleaching events. The data included an unprecedented marine heatwave in 2015. They found that reefs with more fish, particularly herbivorous scrapers…