Publisher Health

The mother of a young girl operated on by a disgraced surgeon at a famous London children’s hospital says she should never have been left in his care.

“It felt like being stabbed, I’d be on my hands and knees in pain.”

A group of Democratic lawmakers accused Georgia Pathways to Coverage, the only Medicaid work requirement program in the country, of spending little of its funding on health benefits.A group of Democratic senators said on Wednesday that they had called for a federal watchdog investigation into a controversial Medicaid work requirement program in Georgia, accusing its administrators of churning through tens of millions of dollars in funding while enrolling a fraction of the low-income residents estimated to be eligible for it.The program, called Georgia Pathways to Coverage, has been hailed by the state’s Republican governor, Brian Kemp, as an innovative approach to administering Medicaid, which covers more than 70 million people in the United States. It is the only Medicaid work requirement program currently operating.Medicaid coverage is still available in Georgia without a work requirement, but the state has one of the strictest eligibility limits in the nation. Those who receive coverage through Pathways would otherwise not be eligible for Medicaid, but they must show that they are working, enrolled in college or doing community service for at least 80 hours each month to qualify.The program, which is set to expire next year, has been closely watched by Republicans and conservative policy experts as a possible template for restructuring Medicaid in the next Trump administration. Republican lawmakers in recent months have discussed legislation that would institute Medicaid work requirements.In a letter sent on Tuesday to Gene L. Dodaro, the head of the Government Accountability Office, the Democratic lawmakers, including Georgia’s two senators, Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff, pointed to the high costs of the program and the way the money had been spent: at least $40 million as of June, with more than 80 percent going to administrative and consulting costs.“While hundreds of thousands of Georgians are left without the health coverage they need, taxpayer dollars are being routed into the pockets of eligibility system vendors and consultants,” wrote the lawmakers, a group that also included Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon.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.

Officials have discovered the virus in 645 herds of dairy cattle, more than in any other state so far.Gov. Gavin Newsom of California declared on Wednesday that the outbreak of bird flu among the state’s dairy cattle constituted an emergency, a stark acknowledgment of the increasing seriousness of the contagion’s spread.California was not among the first states to detect the bird flu virus, H5N1, in dairy cattle. But since the first identification of an infected herd in late August, the state’s agriculture department has found the virus in 645 dairies, about half of them in the past 30 days alone.The announcement follows news that an individual in Louisiana has been hospitalized with bird flu, the first severe case of infection identified so far in the United States. The declaration of an emergency gives state and local authorities the resources they need to contain the outbreak, including hiring staff or issuing contracts. “This proclamation is a targeted action to ensure government agencies have the resources and flexibility they need to respond quickly to this outbreak,” Mr. Newsom said in a statement.“While the risk to the public remains low, we will continue to take all necessary steps to prevent the spread of this virus,” he said. The outbreak in dairy cattle is thought to have begun in Texas early this year. As of Wednesday, 865 infected herds have been identified in 16 states. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has also confirmed H5N1 infection in 61 people, and indicated another seven as “probable” cases. Only 37 of the 61 cases have been traced to interaction with infected cattle; the remaining are attributed either to exposure to diseased poultry, or are of unknown origin.Many experts, including those at the World Health Organization, have faulted the U.S. response to the outbreak. Until recently, nearly all testing of cattle and of people who may be infected with the virus has been voluntary. Bird flu does not yet spread easily among people, but every untreated infection is an opportunity for it to gain the ability to do so, experts have warned.The Agriculture Department said earlier this month that it would begin testing the nation’s milk supply for H5N1, and would require farmers and dairy processors to provide samples of raw milk on request from the government. California’s testing and monitoring system is the largest in the nation, as is the state’s dairy industry. This developing story will be updated.

Dr. Mark Hyman, a “functional medicine” proponent and longtime friend of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., is finding powerful allies in his bid to treat disease with blood tests and supplements.Dr. Mark Hyman didn’t hesitate before accepting an invitation, 14 years ago, to a weeklong white-water rafting trip with Robert F. Kennedy Jr.Mr. Kennedy, the environmental lawyer, conspiracy theorist and political scion, was bringing like-minded souls to the wild, undammed Futaleufú River in southern Chile to raise awareness about a hydropower project threatening the valley. Dr. Hyman was exactly the type of expert Mr. Kennedy forged alliances with: a doctor who bucked the mainstream and had a roster of well-heeled clients.At one point on the trip, Dr. Hyman recalled, his raft overturned, and he clung to it until the group reached calmer waters. Later, on shore, he and Mr. Kennedy indulged in a gaucho-style barbecue. “It’s a dangerous river,” Dr. Hyman said in a recent interview with The New York Times. “We survived that experience together.”The two men have bonded on many other getaways in the years since, often discussing Dr. Hyman’s preventative approach to health care, known as functional medicine. As their connection grew, so did their fame.Dr. Hyman, 65, has amassed millions of followers interested in his booming wellness empire, which includes a supplement company, a hit podcast, 15 best-selling books and a start-up health testing company with celebrity backing.And the doctor’s adventure partner, Mr. Kennedy, ascended to become an independent presidential candidate and, now, President-elect Donald Trump’s pick for the next secretary of Health and Human Services, vowing to “Make America Healthy Again.”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.

Statements by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Elon Musk tap into a dispute over whether lifestyle changes or drugs are a better way to treat obesity.For Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the activist whom President-elect Donald J. Trump will nominate to serve as the secretary of health and human services, the solution to obesity in America — now at 40 percent of adults — is straightforward: “The first line of response should be lifestyle,” he told Jim Cramer in a Dec. 12 interview on CNBC.Elon Musk, the technology billionaire who advises the president-elect, sees things differently: “Nothing would do more to improve the health, lifespan and quality of life for Americans than making GLP inhibitors super low cost to the public,” he wrote on X, referring to the new class of drugs that cause weight loss, including Ozempic. “Nothing else is even close.”And there, with the contrasting views of two men in Mr. Trump’s ear, lie two sides of an issue that is plaguing health and nutrition researchers. Is it even possible to change lifestyles and the food environment enough to solve America’s obesity problem? And, if not, do we really want to solve it by putting millions of people on powerful drugs? What is the right balance between the two approaches?Many people find that eating well is easier said than done. Food companies have saturated the United States and other nations with seductively cheap and tasty things to eat, available seemingly everywhere and around the clock. Obesity researchers suspect that the current food environment has allowed many Americans to be as overweight as they possibly can be.But for the first time, there is an effective countervailing force — powerful new obesity drugs like Wegovy and Zepbound that allow people to ignore the siren call of high-calorie foods and large portion sizes.Those with views like Mr. Kennedy’s believe it is wrong to use pharmaceuticals to manage obesity and related issues that are tied to unhealthy lifestyle and to a ruinous food environment. The makers of obesity drugs, Mr. Kennedy told Greg Gutfeld on Fox News before the election, are “counting on selling it to Americans because we’re so stupid and so addicted to drugs.”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.

Werra Maulu Botey could not bear to close his daughter’s coffin. Waiting to bury her, he slid the rough wooden lid back, again and again, to adjust her small head and smooth the cloth that cradled it away from her cheeks.Olive died of measles, at the age of 5, the evening before. She was the first child to die that weekend in an emergency measles treatment center in the town of Bikoro, in the northwest Democratic Republic of Congo. The second was her cousin, a 1-year-old girl.Measles is sweeping through the children of Bikoro, as it does every couple of years, creeping, then flaring, across this vast country.It is on the rise in other parts of the world, too — including in some communities in the United States — though the measles vaccine has been in use since 1963 and is believed to have saved more lives than any other childhood immunization.There were more than 311,000 reported cases of measles in Congo last year. Some 6,000 of them ended as Olive’s did: with a child buried in a small coffin days after first running a fever and breaking out in a red rash. This year, cases have been fewer — about 97,000 — but the virus has become more lethal, killing more than 2,100. It’s not clear why.Globally, there were 20 percent more measles cases in 2023 than in the year before, according to the World Health Organization, for a total of 10.3 million, and more than 107,000 people died. Fifty-seven countries had “large or disruptive” outbreaks, the W.H.O. said, nearly 60 percent more than in 2022.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.

BBCWARNING: This article contains description of crimes which some readers may find upsetting

Family HandoutAn inquest has found a woman, who died while trying to abscond from a psychiatric ward, did not intend to take her own life.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. began a tour of Capitol Hill this week to pay courtesy calls on senators who will vote on his nomination to be health secretary and to calm concerns that he would limit access to vaccines, especially for polio. “I’m all for the polio vaccine,” Mr. Kennedy said to a throng of reporters on Monday.President-elect Donald J. Trump also sought to head off inevitable questions.“You’re not going to lose the polio vaccine,” Mr. Trump declared during a news conference on Monday. “That’s not going to happen.”But a New York Times review of Mr. Kennedy’s public comments over the past several years shows that he has consistently expressed views about the polio vaccine that are at odds with the medical consensus. For example, he has suggested that after the vaccine was first introduced, it might have caused a wave of cancers “that killed many, many, many, many, many more people than polio ever did.” And he has said the idea that the vaccine resulted in a drastic decline in polio cases is “a mythology” that is “just not true.”His opinions on the polio vaccine have come under scrutiny since an article in The New York Times reported on Friday that Aaron Siri, a lawyer who is advising Mr. Kennedy during the transition, had filed petitions on behalf of a nonprofit to revoke federal approval of the standalone polio vaccine, known as IPOL, and to pause distribution of 13 other shots, some of which include polio immunization.Mr. Kennedy’s spokeswoman, Katie Miller, also weighed in Monday in an email message: “Mr. Kennedy believes the polio vaccine should be available to the public and thoroughly and properly studied.”Here is an analysis of some of Mr. Kennedy’s statements about the polio vaccine.On the polio vaccine’s effectivenessOn a podcast posted on July 6, 2023, with the computer scientist Lex Fridman, Mr. Kennedy said that “there’s no vaccine that is, you know, safe and effective,” a statement he later walked back. Mr. Fridman challenged him: “Those are big words. What about polio?”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.