In Rwanda, 11 deaths have been reported from this rare but deadly disease. Two people tested negative in Germany this week.Rwanda is in the midst of an outbreak of Marburg virus disease, a hemorrhagic fever with a high fatality rate that has killed 11 people there this year.The disease has been found in multiple African countries over the last several decades but never before in Rwanda, in east-central Africa. It was first detected in the country in late September, and since then, 36 cases have been reported, according to the health ministry of Rwanda.This week, the authorities in Germany closed part of Hamburg’s central train station after a medical student and his companion reported feeling ill. The medical student had had contact with an infected patient while in Rwanda. Both people in Germany tested negative for Marburg, the authorities announced this week, emphasizing that there was no risk to the public.Here’s what we know about the disease.What is Marburg virus disease?Marburg was first detected in 1967, when outbreaks of hemorrhagic fever occurred simultaneously in laboratories in the German cities of Marburg and Frankfurt and in Belgrade, in what is now Serbia. The cases were linked to African green monkeys that had been imported from Uganda. Other cases were later found in Angola, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Ghana, Kenya, South Africa and Uganda, according to the World Health Organization.The Marburg virus is the pathogen that causes the disease in humans.A colorized scanning of an electron micrograph shows Marburg virus particles (in blue), both budding and attached to the surface of infected cells (in yellow).Image Point FR/National Institutes of Health/National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases/BSIP/Universal Images Group via Getty ImagesThe disease is clinically similar to Ebola in its spread, symptoms and progression, although it is caused by a different virus, according to the W.H.O.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe.

Doctors can provide alternative forms of screening for colon and rectal cancer but sometimes have a good reason to stick with the colonoscope.This year about 53,000 Americans are expected to die from colon or rectal cancer. Doctors say most people should start getting screened at age 45. Yet many who are eligible skip testing.When most people in this country think of colon cancer screening, they think of colonoscopies, which let doctors examine the colon but can be inconvenient. Yet there are other equally acceptable options for screening.If more people knew about other kinds of colorectal cancer testing, some experts hope, perhaps some who put off colonoscopies would be screened and deaths from colon cancer could be avoided.Here’s what you need to know about colonoscopies and fecal tests, which to ask for, and why your doctor might be recommending one over the other.How do colonoscopies and fecal tests work?Colonoscopies are widely used, but there is another option available: fecal tests.Both types of test attempt to find cancers and large polyps — growths on the wall of the colon — that occasionally turn into cancers. Cancers that are found early often can be cured when doctors simply cut them out. Finding and removing polyps can also prevent cancers.Colonoscopies start with a patient’s taking strong laxatives to empty the colon. On the day of the test, the patient is sedated. Then, a doctor inserts a colonoscope — a flexible tube with a video camera at the end — into the rectum and colon and looks for polyps and cancers to remove. The doctor may also take samples for study in a lab.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe.

Getty ImagesThe number of adults in England to have started vaping despite never having been regular smokers has reached one million, scientists estimate.

If elected again, he would become the oldest president by the end of his term. Yet he is refusing to disclose even basic health information.As a presidential candidate in 2015, Donald J. Trump declined to release his medical records, instead offering a four-paragraph letter from his personal doctor proclaiming that he would be “the healthiest person ever elected to the presidency.”In 2020, hospitalized with Covid and running for re-election, Mr. Trump’s doctors gave minimal information about his condition, which, it emerged later, was far more dire than their public descriptions let on.In 2024, days before becoming the official Republican presidential nominee for the third time, he was grazed by a would-be assassin’s bullet, yet his campaign did not hold a briefing on his condition, release hospital records or make the emergency physicians who treated him available for interview.Now, just over a month from an election that could make Mr. Trump, 78, the oldest person ever to serve as president (82 years, 7 months and 6 days when his term would end in January 2029), he is refusing to release even the most basic information about his health.If he wins, Mr. Trump could enter the Oval Office with an array of potentially worrisome issues, medical experts say: cardiac risk factors, possible aftereffects from the July assassination attempt and the cognitive decline that naturally comes with age, among others.Age became a major point of concern for voters weighing the capabilities of President Biden, and a poor debate performance that showcased him struggling to articulate sentences ultimately forced him to withdraw from the race. Suddenly facing an opponent nearly 20 years his junior, Mr. Trump told CBS News in August that he would “very gladly” release his medical records to the public, saying he had recently had a medical exam.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe.

SubmittedA woman who died of cancer could have lived longer had she been given a face-to-face appointment with her GP, rather than being misdiagnosed over the phone, her husband has said.

BBC The entire genetic code of up to 100,000 newborn babies in England will be analysed by the NHS, with the aim of speeding up the diagnosis and treatment of more than 200 rare diseases.

Many middle-income countries are left out of the deal, widening a gulf in access to critical medicines.The drugmaker Gilead Sciences on Wednesday announced a plan to allow six generic pharmaceutical companies in Asia and North Africa to make and sell at a lower price its groundbreaking drug lenacapavir, a twice-yearly injection that provides near-total protection from infection with H.I.V.Those companies will be permitted to sell the drug in 120 countries, including all the countries with the highest rates of H.I.V., which are in sub-Saharan Africa. Gilead will not charge the generic drugmakers for the licenses.Gilead says the deal, made just weeks after clinical trial results showed how well the drug works, will provide rapid and broad access to a medication that has the potential to end the decades-long H.I.V. pandemic.But the deal leaves out most middle- and high-income countries — including Brazil, Colombia, Mexico, China and Russia — that together account for about 20 percent of new H.I.V. infections. Gilead will sell its version of the drug in those countries at higher prices. The omission reflects a widening gulf in health care access that is increasingly isolating the people in the middle.Gilead charges $42,250 per patient per year for lenacapavir in the United States, where it is approved as a treatment for H.I.V. The company has said nothing about what lenacapavir will cost when used to prevent H.I.V. infections, a process called pre-exposure prophylaxis, or PrEP.The generics makers — four companies in India, one in Pakistan and one in Egypt — are expected to sell it for much less. Researchers at Liverpool University found the drug could profitably be produced for as little as $40 per patient per year, if it were being purchased in large volumes.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe.

The S.E.C. alleged shortcomings in research said to support the drug, and its developer agreed to a $40 million settlement. Some experts wonder why clinical trials have not been stopped.A drug touted by a small pharmaceutical company as a treatment for Alzheimer’s disease has had a turbulent bid for regulatory approval.Studies that once seemed to support the drug, simufilam, have been called into question, leading to retractions from scientific journals and resignations of top officials at Cassava Sciences, the company sponsoring it.In September, the Securities and Exchange Commission brought charges against Cassava Sciences, alleging that the company had made misleading statements about the results of clinical trial data. The S.E.C. also charged a Cassava consultant researcher for manipulating research results.Cassava Sciences agreed to a $40 million settlement with regulators to resolve the case; the company neither admitted nor denied wrongdoing.Yet to the consternation of some dementia experts, simufilam remains in advanced clinical trials. “If the efficacy and the underlying data is being questioned, which it is, why would you continue the study?” said George Perry, an Alzheimer’s researcher at the University of Texas at San Antonio.While some important results have been challenged, the company maintains there are still research and clinical results that suggest the drug may yet prove valuable.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe.

MRC/NatureThey can walk, hover and the males can even sing love songs to woo mates – all this with a brain that’s tinier than a pinhead.

Getty ImagesShortages of doctors mean the average GP in England has to care for 17% more patients than nine years ago, a BBC analysis shows.