Getty ImagesA new campaign by the NHS in England is encouraging people who experience the first sign of a stroke not to delay calling 999, after analysis of calls made in the last year showed the average time to do so was nearly an hour and a half.

HANDOUTThe number of babies born in England and Wales is now the lowest since the 1970s, official statistics show.

He worked alongside another doctor to show that a simple rehydration therapy could check the ravages of cholera and other diarrhea-inducing diseases.Richard A. Cash, who as a young public-health researcher in South Asia in the late 1960s showed that a simple cocktail of salt, sugar and clean water could check the ravages of cholera and other diarrhea-inducing diseases, an innovation that has saved an estimated 50 million lives, died on Oct. 22 at his home in Cambridge, Mass. He was 83.His wife, Stella Dupuis, said the cause was brain cancer.In the 1960s, diseases like cholera and dysentery killed some five million children worldwide per year, primarily through dehydration caused by diarrhea and vomiting. Patients could go “from a grape to a raisin” within hours, Dr. Cash often said.It was widely understood that rehydration could save many of them, but that was easier said than done: intravenous drips, the standard method, required equipment, training and clinical settings that were often hard to come by in the impoverished communities where the diseases festered.Dr. Cash, the son of a family doctor, arrived in East Pakistan, today Bangladesh, in 1967 as part of a project through the U.S. Public Health Service. There he worked with another young American doctor, David Nalin, to respond to a cholera outbreak outside the capital, Dhaka.The two had already been researching a simple oral rehydration therapy and knew of other, previous efforts, all of which had failed. But they believed that the therapy held promise, especially in the face of mounting deaths.They realized that a main problem was volume: Past efforts had resulted in too little or too much hydration. Dr. Cash and Dr. Nalin conceived a trial in which they carefully measured the amount of liquid lost and replaced it with the same amount, mixed with salt and sugar to facilitate absorption.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 new director overseeing medical devices will confront criticisms about hasty approvals as she ushers in revolutionary technology.There are now artificial intelligence programs that scan M.R.I.s for signs of cancer, Apple AirPods that work as hearing aids and devices that decode the electrical blips of the brain to restore speech to those who have lost it.Medical device technology is now deeply entrenched in many patients’ health care and can have a stunning impact on their lives. As advancements become more tangible to millions of Americans, regulation of the devices has commanded increasing attention at the Food and Drug Administration.Dr. Michelle Tarver, a 15-year-veteran of the agency, is stepping into that spotlight at a critical time. She is taking the reins of the F.D.A.’s device division from Dr. Jeffrey Shuren, who forged deep ties with the device industry, sped up the pace of approvals and made the agency more approachable to companies. Some of those device makers were represented by Dr. Shuren’s wife and her law firm, posing ethical conflicts for him that continue to draw scrutiny.Dr. Michelle Tarver, an ophthalmologist and a 15-year veteran of the F.D.A.’s medical device division.U.S. Food and Drug AdministrationMore broadly, congressional lawmakers and consumer advocates have become increasingly concerned about the device industry’s influence over the sprawling division, which has a budget of about $790 million and a staff of 2,500. Device safety and standards for agency approvals of products as intimate as heart valves or neural implants will be at the forefront of the division’s mission in the coming years. Among the issues Dr. Tarver will encounter:Brains, computers and Elon MuskFew devices will require such intense oversight as one of the most breathtaking technologies in development: brain-computer interfaces that dip into the surface layers of the brain to decode its electrical noise — and return function to people who have lost it.Researchers from a number of teams have demonstrated the capability to restore the voice and speech of a California man with ALS, to enable a paralyzed man to walk and to help a man who is paralyzed below the neck to play Mario Kart by simply thinking about steering left or right.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 government is looking again at whether disabled people in England should be able to claim more than £30,000 to make adaptations to their homes.

If every emergency room in the United States were fully prepared to treat children, thousands of lives would be saved and the cost would be $11.84 or less per child, researchers found.The morning after Phyllis Rabinowitz brought her newborn daughter home from the hospital, she knew something was terribly wrong. The baby, Rebecca, had thick mucus, trouble breathing and lethargy unlike anything Ms. Rabinowitz had seen in her first child.But during multiple visits to the emergency room, doctors told Ms. Rabinowitz that Rebecca had a common cold and sent them home. At nine days old, Rebecca died; her parents learned from an autopsy that the cause was a viral infection that could have been managed had she been admitted.More than 80 percent of emergency departments in United States hospitals are not fully prepared for pediatric cases, a new study finds, despite the fact that children make up about 20 percent of visits each year.The new analysis, published Friday in the journal JAMA Network Open, estimated that if every emergency department in the United States had the core features of “pediatric readiness,” more than a quarter of the child deaths that follow E.R. visits could be prevented, a figure that equates to thousands of young lives each year.Even in the most ill-prepared states, the cost to ready every emergency room would be less than $12 per child living there, the researchers found.“You can now find your state and see: How many children who would otherwise die could we expect to save if we implemented universal pediatric readiness at a high level?” said Dr. Craig Newgard, who was the lead author on the paper, and is the director of the Center for Policy and Research in Emergency Medicine at Oregon Health & Science University.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.

GPs are calling on the government to exempt them from tax rises for employers announced at the Budget, warning it could hit services for patients.

A mother from Aylesham, Kent, who says she pays £2,000 a month for her daughter’s medicinal cannabis supply has called for greater access to the drug on the NHS.

Getty ImagesGPs, care homes and hospices have voiced concerns about the impact of the rise in employer National Insurance contributions announced in the Budget.

BBCThousands of people will march on London on Sunday at a family-friendly rally to highlight the importance of clean water in their lives. The BBC speaks to residents near one rural waterway, which scientists found had the second highest levels of active pharmaceutical pollution in the UK.