Published15 hours agoShareclose panelShare pageCopy linkAbout sharingImage source, Getty ImagesBy Madeline HalpertBBC NewsA person in Texas has tested positive for bird flu, the second US human case of the virus that has infected herds of dairy cows in recent weeks. State health officials said the patient had experienced eye redness after coming into contact with sick cows. The risk to the general public is low, experts said, but people should take precautions when around ill animals.The Texas patient is being treated with an antiviral drug and is isolating.Despite its name, the virus is not limited to birds, and in recent weeks it has been detected in cows in several states, including Texas, Kansas and Michigan. It does not normally spread to people, but human infections have occurred in rare cases around the world.In people, the virus, also known as avian flu, can cause symptoms that range from mild illness, such as upper respiratory and eye infections, to severe disease such as pneumonia that can be fatal, according to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC).The first human case of H5N1 bird flu in the US occurred in 2022 in Colorado, when a person became ill after direct exposure to poultry presumed to be infected. That person experienced fatigue for a few days and made a full recovery. While avian flu is often fatal in poultry, it has been less lethal for cattle. The CDC advises people to avoid exposure to sick or dead animals including wild birds, poultry and cattle. The agency also says people should not eat uncooked or undercooked related food products such as unpasteurized milk and cheeses. More on this storyWhat is bird flu and what’s behind the outbreak?Published23 May 2023Bird flu infects penguins at famous wildlife havenPublished11 March

Published56 minutes agoShareclose panelShare pageCopy linkAbout sharingImage source, PerrigoBy Madeline HalpertBBC News, New YorkThe US government has approved the first-ever over-the-counter birth control pill. The Food and Drug Administration announced on Thursday birth control pill Opill will be available without a prescription for women of all ages. In a statement, the agency said the move would help reduce women’s barriers to accessing contraception. The manufacturer of Opill has said it will most likely be available over the counter in early 2024.Doctors say that the progestin-only pill – often known as the “minipill” – is a particularly safe form of contraception because it does not contain oestrogen, meaning it has fewer side effects and health risks. The most common side effects of Opill include irregular bleeding, headaches, dizziness and nausea. The US joins more than 100 countries around the world that have made the birth control pill available over the counter, including most countries in Latin America, as well as India, China and the United Kingdom. “When used as directed, daily oral contraception is safe and is expected to be more effective than currently available nonprescription contraceptive methods in preventing unintended pregnancy,” said Dr Patrizia Cavazzoni, director of the FDA’s Center for Drug Evaluation and Research. The approval comes after an FDA expert advisory panel in May unanimously voted to recommend the pill be available over the counter. Panel backs first US over-the-counter birth controlDuring the hearing, some scientists had raised concerns about whether young people and those with limited literacy could understand the directions, including not taking the prescription if they had a history of breast cancer. But committee members concluded women with breast cancer were already likely to be in contact with their doctors and aware that they should not take hormonal contraception. Ultimately, the panel found that Opill – first approved by the FDA in 1973 – had a history of safety and efficacy in preventing pregnancies. Experts say women – and in particular, teenagers – encounter a number of barriers to accessing reproductive health services, including a lack of health insurance and difficulty finding transportation to doctor’s appointments. Women also sometimes face stigma and shame from health care providers and parents when trying to obtain the pill, experts added. Dyvia Huitron is one of these people. She has struggled for three years to access the birth control pill. Growing up in a predominately Hispanic, religious community in the border town of McAllen, Texas, the 19-year-old first tried to get a prescription when she started having sex at age 16. But her parents, who had her when they were teenagers, denied her the required permission because they worried the contraceptive would make her engage in more sexually risky behaviour. Then, at age 18, Ms Huitron went to college in Alabama, where the age of adulthood is 19, meaning her parents would still be able to review her medical information, forcing her to wait one more year.”Because I came from teen parents, that was one of my biggest fears,” she told the BBC. “I wanted to do everything to prevent that same outcome … But I had to jump through so many hoops.”Doctors and activists have argued making birth control available without a prescription will have a host of health benefits for women and teenagers like Ms Huitron, including reducing unintended pregnancies. In the US, some studies have found as many as nearly half of all pregnancies are unintended. For the most part, the debate on whether to make contraception more readily available has not sparked the same controversy as the conversation around abortion access. In statements to the BBC, several anti-abortion groups, including National Right to Life and Susan B Anthony Pro Life America, said they do not take a stance on birth control. The FDA decision was lauded by several medical and advocacy groups on Thursday, including Advocates for Youth, a nonprofit organisation pushing for reproductive health rights, which called the approval “long overdue”. The group says the price of the pill remains a concern, especially for young people. The organisation plans to advocate for insurance companies to consider covering the over-the-counter purchases. It is unclear exactly how much Opill will cost at pharmacies, but the Biden administration said the pill’s manufacturer, Perrigo, will determine its price. More on this storyUS considers over-the-counter birth control pillsPublished12 July 2022Panel backs first US over-the-counter birth controlPublished10 May

Published14 hours agoShareclose panelShare pageCopy linkAbout sharingImage source, Toni DezomitsBy Madeline HalpertBBC News, New YorkToni Dezomits, a 55-year-old retired law enforcement officer, is fighting a recurrence of her stage 4 ovarian cancer. She had already undergone several rounds of chemotherapy when her doctor told her she had some more bad news. Just a day before her third round of treatment last month, Ms Dezomits was told there was a nationwide shortage of the generic chemotherapy drug, carboplatin – one of three medications she was meant to receive.Forced to choose between going without the medication or swapping it for another with stronger side effects, the North Carolina native is finishing her final three chemotherapy sessions with only two of the recommended drugs. “You have these two sub-optimal choices,” she said. “I’m worried, because I know the drug I’m not getting is the one my cancer responded to very well [the first time].”Experts say the US is currently suffering one of the most severe shortages of chemotherapy drugs it’s seen for three decades.Ms Dezomits is one of as many as 100,000 patients who may have been affected over the past several months, according to Dr Julie Gralow, the chief medical officer at the American Society of Clinical Oncology. As of this week, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) said over 130 drugs were in short supply, 14 of which are cancer treatments. Experts say a myriad of factors have contributed to the shortages, which this time have heavily affected two front-line therapies – carboplatin and cisplatin – used to treat a host of cancers, including head and neck, gynaecologic and gastrointestinal cancers. The most recent shortage came after a plant in India – which supplied cisplatin materials for all US manufacturers – shut down due to quality concerns. This drove up demand for a substitute drug, carboplatin, said Dr Gralow. As a result, some providers have been forced to extend the time period between patients’ chemotherapy sessions, while some patients have had to drive several hours to get treatment at different cancer centres.When her local oncologist could not provide her carboplatin, Ms Dezomits tried a larger cancer centre in Texas where she had been before. But they told her they could not give her the drug because they were prioritising giving it to patients with better odds of being cured.”It’s like triage on the battlefield,” said Ms Dezomits, who was a soldier in the Persian Gulf war. “This country should be a little better than that. We should be able to get life-saving drugs that cost about $9 or $10 a dose.”Image source, Getty ImagesThe low cost of generic front-line cancer drugs has actually played a role in recurrent chemotherapy drug shortages, experts say. While the medications are cheap to manufacture, pharmaceutical companies are not incentivised to do so because they don’t bring in large profits, said Dr Karen Knudsen, CEO of the American Cancer Society. The drug shortage issue has also worsened as US life expectancy has increased, meaning more people are becoming ill with cancer.Blood test for 50 cancers excites scientists Scientists say million-year-old viruses help fight cancerTo help ease the supply chain crunches, the FDA began working with a Chinese manufacturer this week to import one of the chemotherapy drugs.The move will likely help solve some short-term supply constraints in the coming months, but it will do little to address a more cyclical problem of chemotherapy drug shortages, said Dr Knudsen.”An emergency solution is being put into place, but we are at a moment in time where there needs to be a more durable solution,” she said. Medical experts said the US government should work with the private sector to come up with more long-term solutions. The US government could use its drug purchasing dollars to create national strategic reserves of the critical medicines and incentivise more higher-quality pharmaceutical companies to manufacture them, said Dr Gralow. Patient Ms Dezomits fears that without more action, people across the US may continue to be put in challenging situations to find the cancer care they need. “It’s already stressful enough to deal with cancer and your own mortality,” she said. “This is just another obstacle in front of patients that now they’ve got to think about.” More on this storyAntibiotic supply has worsened, say pharmacistsPublished14 December 2022‘Blood test meant I was spared chemo’Published30 March

Published2 hours agoShareclose panelShare pageCopy linkAbout sharingImage source, ReutersBy Madeline HalpertBBC NewsA US researcher has broken the world record for the longest time spent living underwater without depressurisation.Joseph Dituri has spent more than 74 days at the bottom of a 30ft-deep lagoon in Key Largo, Florida.And he does not have plans to stop yet. On Sunday, he said he would stay in Jules’ Undersea Lodge for at least 100 days.”The curiosity for discovery has led me here,” he said. “My goal from day one has been to inspire generations to come, interview scientists who study life undersea and learn how the human body functions in extreme environments,” he added. The previous world record for most days spent living underwater at ambient pressure – 73 – was established by two professors in 2014 in the same Key Largo lodge. Unlike a submarine, the lodge does not use technology to adjust for the increased underwater pressure.This video can not be playedTo play this video you need to enable JavaScript in your browser.Prof Dituri – who goes by the nickname Dr Deep Sea – began his journey on 1 March at Jules’ Undersea Lodge, a small room that sits at the bottom of a lagoon in the Florida Keys. It is named after Jules Verne, who wrote the well-known sci-fi book 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea.For the project, called Project Neptune 100, the University of South Florida professor is studying how the human body reacts to long-term exposure to extreme pressure. Researchers are studying the 55-year-old’s health, as well as the psychological effects of being isolated and confined for so long, by running a series of medical tests. But his time underwater has not kept him from his professorial duties. Prof Dituri – who also served in the Navy for 28 years – is teaching his biomedical engineering classes online while he lives in the lagoon, according to the University of South Florida. To keep busy, the professor wakes up at 05:00 each day to exercise. He stays full by reportedly eating protein-heavy meals such as eggs and salmon that he can keep warm with his microwave.And while his underwater stay has proven ground-breaking, he is excited to get back to some above-ground activities. “The thing that I miss the most about being on the surface is literally the sun,” he told the Associated Press.More on this storyAquanaut attempts record-breaking 100 days underwaterPublished21 March

Published1 hour agoShareclose panelShare pageCopy linkAbout sharingImage source, Getty ImagesBy Madeline HalpertBBC NewsCanada’s population grew by over a million people for the first time ever last year, the government has said. The country’s population increased from 38,516,138 to 39,566,248 people, Statistics Canada said. It also marked Canada’s highest annual population growth rate – 2.7% – since 1957. The increase was in part fuelled by government efforts to recruit migrants to the country to ease labour shortages, Statistics Canada said. The country also depends on migration to support an ageing population. But Statistics Canada said the surge in the number of permanent and temporary immigrants could “also represent additional challenges for some regions of the country related to housing, infrastructure and transportation, and service delivery to the population”. International migration accounted for nearly 96% of the population growth, according to the news release. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has made efforts to attract more immigrants to the country since gaining power in 2015. Last year, the government announced a plan to welcome half a million immigrants a year by 2025.Why Canada aims to bring in 1.5m immigrants by 2025Why migrants are choosing Canada in record numbersThe Canadian government has also been accepting people affected by conflicts like the Ukraine war, the humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan and the 2023 earthquakes in Turkey and Syria.On Wednesday, it announced an extension – until July – of a programme that offers to temporarily resettle Ukrainians and their family members.So far, more than 600,000 applications have been approved of the nearly-one-million that have been received – and more than 130,000 people have arrived in Canada under the initiative. Canada’s previous highest population increase, in 1957, came within the context of the post-World War Two baby boom and the movement of refugees following the Hungarian Revolution.The country welcomed 437,000 immigrants in 2022, while the number of non-permanent residents in the country increased by 607,782, accounting for a “record-breaking year for the processing of immigration applications”, according to the government’s news release. The population increase also means Canada would rank first among the 38 member countries of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development for 2022 population growth, while it was also the fastest-growing G7 country, according to Statistics Canada. If Canada maintained the 2.7% increase each year, its population would double in 26 years, the government added. More on this storyWhy Canada aims to bring in 1.5m immigrants by 202522 November 2022Why migrants are choosing Canada in record numbers2 days ago

Published2 hours agoShareclose panelShare pageCopy linkAbout sharingImage source, Getty ImagesBy Madeline HalpertBBC News, WashingtonUS households are once again able to order free at-home Covid-19 tests, as the government attempts to limit the spread of the virus this winter.The White House said up to four rapid tests could be ordered from the government website CovidTests.gov.It announced that the test programme, which was paused in September, would be restarted on Thursday with deliveries beginning the week of 19 December.The decision comes as Covid infections rise ahead of the winter holidays. The Biden administration began sending free at-home tests in January, but stopped in September after more than 600 million tests were distributed because Congress did not approve the extra funding needed for the programme to continue.But the government is now using funding left over from the American Rescue Plan, the Covid relief bill that was passed last year, to pay for the tests, a US official told the BBC’s US partner CBS. “We feel confident that we are going to have enough tests to get through this round, four per household, in the coming weeks,” a senior administration official told reporters on Wednesday,It is part of a broader White House plan to prepare for Covid this winter, when some Americans are at an increased risk of catching the virus as they gather indoors for the holidays. Three reasons Biden’s Covid bill was a big dealDoctors urge holiday caution as RSV and flu riseSurging viruses stretch US children’s hospitalsThe White House said it hoped to encourage Americans to take at-home tests when they are symptomatic, before and after travelling for the holidays and when visiting vulnerable individuals.Covid cases, hospital visits and deaths have all begun to rise in recent weeks. Some cities are calling on Americans to wear masks again in indoor spaces to prevent the spread of respiratory illnesses, while White House officials have urged Americans to get the latest Covid and flu jabs.Only 13.5% of those aged five and older in the US have received the updated coronavirus shot targeting the omicron variant, according to the CDC. Highly contagious omicron subvariants – which are now the dominant coronavirus strains in the US – are contributing to the uptick in cases.You might also be interested in: This video can not be playedTo play this video you need to enable JavaScript in your browser.More on this storyDoctors urge holiday caution as RSV and flu rise30 NovemberCovid-19 pandemic is over in the US – Joe Biden20 SeptemberBiden buys 500m test kits to tackle Omicron surge21 December 2021

Published16 hours agoSharecloseShare pageCopy linkAbout sharingImage source, Getty ImagesBy Madeline HalpertBBC News, WashingtonWith the holiday season approaching in the US, doctors are urging people to exercise caution to avoid a surge in common and potentially dangerous winter viruses.The US is facing a rise in cases of respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), with some hospitals opening extra beds to treat patients, while there are concerns about other illnesses such as flu.Winnie Chow, a parent to ten-month old Cooper, took her son to hospital earlier this month after he had been vomiting and coughing for several days. He spent four days there recovering from RSV.”I was in tears,” said Ms Chow, who lives in Hackensack, New Jersey. “For him to be there for more than a day was very scary.”Ms Chow is one of many parents who have had to seek care for an unwell child as winter viruses arrive earlier and with more severity than in recent years – a trend experts say could persist as people gather indoors for Thanksgiving and Christmas.Image source, Winnie Chow”We do worry when people start gathering,” said Richard Malley, a senior physician with the Division of Infectious Disease at Boston Children’s Hospital in Massachusetts. “When you have multiple generations mingling together, you have an increased risk of transmission from someone who is handling the virus pretty well to someone who may not handle it well at all.”What is RSV and what are the symptoms? RSV can manifest like a common cold in adults, but can prove dangerous for some young children.Symptoms include a cough, congestion, runny nose and fever as well as wheezing in young infants, according to Rachel Orscheln, the director of ambulatory paediatric infectious diseases at St Louis Children’s Hospital.For the most vulnerable, RSV can lead to bronchiolitis, a condition that includes a build-up of inflammation in the lungs and difficulty breathing. There is no vaccine for RSV but scientists are working on developing one.It can be difficult to distinguish between RSV, coronavirus and the flu because the respiratory viruses include many of the same symptoms and usually peak in winter.But physicians can use tests to diagnose patients to determine the best course of treatment.Parents should reach out to their child’s healthcare provider if they begin to have concerns, especially if they are experiencing worsening symptoms, difficulty breathing or are struggling to drink fluids, said Sonali Advani, an assistant professor of medicine at Duke University’s Division of Infectious Diseases.Why are RSV and flu cases rising? Experts say protective measures like social distancing, mask wearing and other hygiene practices from the coronavirus pandemic likely shielded some children from exposure to the flu and their first RSV infection, which most children normally experience by age two. This means they may now be more vulnerable to infection.An earlier RSV season followed by more severe flu infections has created a “perfect storm” that is “flooding our paediatric capacity”, said Daniel Rauch, the chief of Paediatric Hospital Medicine at Tufts Medicine in Massachusetts. He told the BBC a reduction in hospital beds for children during the coronavirus pandemic, which was intended to make space for adults who are more vulnerable to severe illness from Covid, had worsened the current problem.Some experts said they were not optimistic the issues would resolve soon, as close contact during Thanksgiving and the rest of the winter holiday season could offer more opportunities for viral transmission. How to stay safeGetting vaccinated against Covid and the flu offers one of the best forms of protection against some of the respiratory illnesses that are circulating, experts told the BBC.US infectious disease chief Dr Anthony Fauci said the flu jab was “well-matched” to the circulating strain, while White House Covid co-ordinator Dr Ashish Jha urged Americans to “make protecting our loved ones an important part of the conversation we have around the Thanksgiving table”.Image source, Getty ImagesTaking a rapid test for Covid on the morning of Thanksgiving and other winter holidays adds another potential layer of protection, Dr Malley said. He added that parents could also make sure any person serving food during large family gatherings is symptom-free and handling the food in a hygienic manner. Handwashing and avoiding touching your face and mouth are also advised.”If you’re sick, maybe skip the family gathering this year,” Dr Rauch said. “Don’t bring it to everybody else.”Parents and children should also wear masks during travel on planes, trains and other public transportation and could do so during gatherings where they are unsure others are vaccinated, Dr Rauch said. In the meantime, Amy Knight, the president of the Children’s Hospital Association which represents more than 220 hospitals across the US, said paediatric hospitals were “getting creative” and finding extra space for patients while working to keep conditions as normal as possible.”No one likes to have a sick child,” she said.”It’s an incredibly stressful time, but many have also been understanding in recognising that the hospital has a big challenge and a big job, and they’re grateful to be there and grateful to have the care.”Additional reporting by Gareth EvansMore on this storyParents stressed over flu season pain med shortage6 days agoAntibody jab approved in UK for common winter virus RSV10 NovemberFlu and winter virus concern but Covid stays level in UK28 October