Getty Images”Ballooning” NHS waiting times and delays getting vital treatment in A&E and cancer care is harming health and costing lives, according to a critical

Francisco Lopera defied rebels, cartels and vampire bats to become a pioneering researcher of Alzheimer’s disease.In 1978, Dr. Francisco Lopera did what recent medical school graduates in Colombia and much of Latin America have long done: He set out for an obligatory year of work in a remote part of the country, where an inexperienced médico rural might be the only physician for miles. Dr. Lopera, who was born in the Andean region of Antioquia and knew mostly mountains and farm life before medical school, carried out his service in the Darién Gap, on the Caribbean coast near Panama.There Dr. Lopera, a groundbreaking Colombian Alzheimer’s researcher who died this week at age 73, treated stabbings, snakebites, complicated births, burns and fevers in a hospital that had electricity for only half the day. On one occasion, he was kidnapped by Marxist guerrillas. Another time, he had to flee gunshots.When I met Dr. Lopera in 2017, to start research on a book about the families with Alzheimer’s that became his life’s work, he told me a story about two young brothers who had died one after the other in his hospital, of unknown causes. Lopera traveled to the family home in a remote jungle clearing, where he discovered that the boys’ surviving siblings had bites on their fingers from vampire bats. He sent the bodies to a pathology lab hours away by boat, and the pathologists confirmed rabies. When the government brought in a rabies expert to investigate, Dr. Lopera joined him.He left that experience — long nights in the rainforest, searching for hidden roosts, engrossed in the natural history of rabies and bats — wanting to become a rabies epidemiologist. But that was not to be. His interests were eclectic and quick to change, and a few years later he became a neurology resident in Medellín.In 1984, Dr. Lopera examined a farmer in his 40s who appeared to have dementia. Dr. Lopera took again the unusual step of traveling to the family home, in a mountain hamlet like the one where he had been born. Not just the farmer had symptoms of dementia, he saw — a brother also appeared to be affected. Dr. Lopera had discovered what would turn out to be the world’s largest family with early-onset Alzheimer’s disease. The family shared a genetic mutation, later nicknamed the paisa mutation, that was unique to their region of Colombia. Dr. Lopera spent the next four decades studying the family’s 6,000 members.Dr. Francisco Lopera, second from right, in Yarumal, Colombia, in 2010, with Oderis Villegas, center, who was showing signs of Alzheimer’s disease at age 50. A sister, María Elsy, left, had a more advanced case.Todd Heisler/The New York TimesWe 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 ImagesFive people are receiving emergency medical care in France for suspected botulism linked to eating pesto.

Getty ImagesAn NHS trust has revealed that about 11,000 people will have to be re-tested after a hospital machine issued incorrect diabetes results.

Fatalities spiked 71 percent last year, far outpacing the 13 percent rise in cases, the World Health Organization said.The cholera outbreaks spreading across the globe are becoming more deadly. Deaths from the diarrheal disease soared last year, far outpacing the increase in cases, according to a new analysis by the World Health Organization.Cholera is easy to prevent and costs just pennies to treat, but huge outbreaks have swamped even well-prepared health systems in countries that had not confronted the disease in years. The number of cholera deaths reported globally last year increased by 71 percent from deaths in 2022, while the number of reported cases rose 13 percent. Much of the increase was driven by conflict and climate change, the W.H.O. report said.“For death rates to be rising so much faster even than cases are increasing, this is totally unacceptable,” said Philippe Barboza, who leads the cholera team in the health emergencies program of the W.H.O. “It reflects the world’s lack of interest in a disease that has plagued humans for thousands of years, afflicting the poorest people who cannot find clean water to drink,” he said.More than 4,000 people were officially reported to have died from cholera in 2023, but the true number is probably far higher, Dr. Barboza said. The W.H.O.’s efforts to model the actual number of cholera deaths, using data gathered from testing programs, found that the total death count for 2023 could be more than 100,000.Cholera can cause death by dehydration in as little as a single day, as the body tries to expel virulent bacteria in streams of vomit and watery diarrhea.“How can we accept that in 2024 that people are dying because they don’t have access to a simple bag of oral rehydration salts that cost 50 cents?” Dr. Barboza said. “It’s not because they don’t have an I.C.U. — it’s just IV fluid and antibiotics that they need.”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.

Glody MurhabaziMedical staff on the front line of the battle against mpox in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo have told the BBC they are desperate for vaccines to arrive so they can stem the rate of new infections.

A neurologist in Colombia, he worked with the world’s largest extended family with Alzheimer’s and helped fuel research to prevent or delay dementia symptoms.Dr. Francisco Lopera, a trailblazing neurologist who identified the world’s largest extended family with Alzheimer’s and spent decades working with them in his native Colombia, died on Tuesday at his home in Medellín. He was 73. The cause was metastatic melanoma.His death was announced on social media by the neuroscience group at the University of Antioquia in Medellín, which Dr. Lopera led until last month, when he retired.Dr. Lopera, a professor at the university for nearly 40 years, made significant discoveries in the field of Alzheimer’s. His work led to identifying the genetic cause of the extended family’s disease, helped pioneer efforts to find drugs to prevent or delay symptoms and spearheaded discoveries of genetic mutations that appear to be able to forestall cognitive decline.He also spent tremendous time and energy providing care and information to patients and their relatives. He identified about 6,000 members of the large clan in Medellín and mountain villages in northwest Colombia. An estimated 1,200 of them were born with a genetic mutation that causes Alzheimer’s, with symptoms starting in their 40s and often causing death in their 60s.“He was very devoted to finding a cure for Alzheimer’s and trying to stop the disease, but he also knew that there were patients that were already facing the disease,” said Yakeel Quiroz, a Colombian neuropsychologist and director of the Multicultural Alzheimer’s Prevention Program at Massachusetts General Hospital who collaborated with Dr. Lopera and was among the many researchers he mentored.Dr. Lopera with a research colleague, Yakeel Quiroz. “He was very devoted to finding a cure for Alzheimer’s and trying to stop the disease,” she said of Dr. Lopera.Massachusetts General Hospital, via Associated PressWe 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.

Therapists and relationship researchers share 6 questions that can bring couples closer during this stage.Midlife can be a weird time. Maybe you’re grappling with new aches and pains or brain fog. Perhaps you’re one of the 2.5 million sandwich generation caregivers simultaneously caring for children and aging parents. Maybe you’re having an identity crisis, maybe not.Middle age lands somewhere between 36 and 64, or maybe 40 to 60, depending on whom you ask. It is also an inflection point in relationships, experts say, a time when many couples emerge from the daily grind of building careers and a family, and find that they’re in a union they no longer fully recognize. Rates of “gray divorce” among adults over 50 have doubled in the United States since the 1990s.“If you have children, your children are typically launching,” said Linda Hershman, the author of “Gray Divorce” and a licensed marriage and family therapist based in Pennsylvania. “Couples are suddenly turning around and looking at each other and thinking: What is this marriage about, and what is this marriage going to be about?”We asked Ms. Hershman and other relationship experts to offer some big-picture questions that middle-aged couples can discuss — or can ask themselves — to help them better understand their relationships, and what they want.What is our next chapter?Orna Guralnik, a Manhattan-based clinical psychologist and psychoanalyst who stars in the Showtime documentary series “Couples Therapy,” encourages her clients to consider their plans for the third chapter of their relationships (when the marriage is neither fresh and new, nor consumed by domestic demands).It’s a conversation she sees many couples having organically, particularly those in their 50s and 60s whose children have left home. “Where are they going to turn that attention?” she often asks. “And how is that going to inflect the couple?”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.

U.S. inspectors listed serious problems in 2022 that could have resulted in strict measures like a pause in production. But the plant continued operating, and some conditions persisted.Two years before a deadly listeria outbreak, U.S. inspectors warned that conditions at a Boar’s Head plant posed an “imminent threat” to public health, citing extensive rust, deli meats exposed to wet ceilings, green mold and holes in the walls.But the U.S. Agriculture Department did not impose strict measures on the plant, in Jarratt, Va., which could have ranged from a warning letter to a suspension of operations.Since then, other inspections found that many of the problems persisted, but again, the plant continued to process tons of beef and pork products, including liverwurst.Genome sequencing tests by public health officials in New York and Maryland tied a strain of listeria found in Boar’s Head liverwurst to the bacteria from people who died or fell ill, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.The company recalled its liverwurst late in July. Days later, Boar’s Head expanded the recall to cover more than 3,500 tons of meat — including ham and other items made in the Jarratt facility, one of several it operates.Production at the meat processing center has been temporarily stopped. Boar’s Head said it was disinfecting the plant and trying to determine the cause of the suspected contamination. Nine elderly people have died and dozens were hospitalized in the worst listeria outbreak in years.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.

Healthy Black women with low risk factors were far more likely to get C-sections than white women with similar medical histories, a large new study found.Obstetricians are more likely to give Black women unnecessary cesarean sections, putting those women at higher risk for serious complications like ruptured surgical wounds.That’s the conclusion of a new report of nearly one million births in 68 hospitals in New Jersey, one of the largest studies to tackle the subject.Even if a Black mother and a white mother with similar medical histories saw the same doctor at the same hospital, the Black mother was about 20 percent more likely to have her baby via C-section, the study found.The additional operations on Black patients were more likely to happen when hospitals had no scheduled C-sections, meaning their operating rooms were sitting empty. That suggests that racial bias paired with financial incentives played a role in doctors’ decision-making, the researchers said.How that bias creeps in is not entirely clear. Doctors may rush to perform a C-section faster for Black women, worried about the well-known racial disparities in childbirth outcomes. Black women may feel less empowered to push back against the suggestion of C-section when their labor is not progressing — or, when they do push back, they may be less likely to have their concerns taken seriously.“Physicians may have certain beliefs about Black women,” said Janet Currie, a health economist at Princeton University and a co-author of the study. “They might not be listening to Black women as much, or be more afraid that something will go wrong.”We want to hear from Black parents and their medical providers about childbirthThe New York Times is investigating disparities in hospital treatment for new parents. We want to hear from Black parents who have given birth within the last five years, and the medical providers (such as doulas, midwives, nurses and doctors) who treat them. We will not publish any part of your submission without contacting you first.

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