Publisher Health

Ms. Arakawa, the wife of the actor Gene Hackman, died from the effects of a disease often caused by contact with droppings from infected rodents.Betsy Arakawa, the wife of Gene Hackman, died from the effects of hantavirus, a rare disease often caused by contact with droppings from infected rodents.Hantavirus does not spread among people in the cases found in the United States. It can be transmitted through rodent saliva. But it is most commonly transmitted by breathing in particles of dried deer mouse droppings or urine.At first, hantavirus causes flulike symptoms, including fever, chills, body aches and headaches. But as the disease progresses, respiratory symptoms develop and patients can experience shortness of breath and then lung or heart failure.Here is what to know about hantavirus.What is hantavirus?Hantavirus refers to a family of viruses that are carried by rodents. It is often transmitted to humans by inhaling particles from dried mouse droppings. In North America, Sin Nombre virus is the most common form of this virus, said Sabra L. Klein, a professor at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.As of the end of 2022, 864 cases of hantavirus disease had been reported in the United States since surveys of such cases began in 1993, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The “classic” case of hantavirus is contracted by someone who has visited a rural cabin that has a rodent infestation, said Emily Abdoler, a doctor and assistant professor of medicine at the University of Michigan Medical School.Hantavirus has flulike symptoms at first.Hantavirus can cause flulike symptoms that appear one to eight weeks after exposure to droppings from an infected rodent, according to Dr. Heather Jarrell, New Mexico’s chief medical examiner. Later, patients often experience shortness of breath and then lung or heart failure.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.

Her “Codependent No More: How to Stop Controlling Others and Start Caring for Yourself,” a guide to shedding toxic relationships, has sold more than seven million copies.Melody Beattie, whose experiences as a drug addict, a chemical dependency counselor and the wife of an alcoholic informed a best-selling book about codependence that has guided countless people to shed toxic relationships, died on Feb. 27 in the Los Feliz neighborhood of Los Angeles. She was 76.Her daughter, Nichole Beattie, said the cause was heart failure. She had been hospitalized from Nov. 30 to Dec. 12, then evacuated from her home in Malibu because of a wildfire and moved into her daughter’s home, where she died.By popularizing the concept of codependence, Ms. Beattie (pronounced BEE-tee) became a literary star in the self-help world with “Codependent No More: How to Stop Controlling Others and Star Caring for Yourself” (1986), which has sold more than seven million copies worldwide.“You could call her the mother of the self-help genre,” said Nicole Dewey, the publishing director of Spiegel & Grau, which has sold more than 400,000 copies of the book since taking over publication in 2022.Trysh Travis, the author of “The Language of the Heart: A Cultural History of the Recovery Movement From Alcoholics Anonymous to Oprah Winfrey” (2009), said in an interview that “Codependent No More” has succeeded because of Ms. Beattie’s common-sense approach and “vernacular charm.”She added: “There had been other books and pamphlets published in the recovery space in the early 1980s. Melody made the same arguments, but her voice came across very clearly. It wasn’t clinical — and she had a set of ideas that could be applied to many if not all the problems one was having — and it hit the market at the right time.”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.

Organizations funded by the United States helped keep dangerous pathogens in check around the world. Now many safeguards are gone, and Americans may pay the price.Dangerous pathogens left unsecured at labs across Africa. Halted inspections for mpox, Ebola and other infections at airports and other checkpoints. Millions of unscreened animals shipped across borders.The Trump administration’s pause on foreign aid has hobbled programs that prevent and snuff out outbreaks around the world, scientists say, leaving people everywhere more vulnerable to dangerous pathogens.That includes Americans. Outbreaks that begin overseas can travel quickly: The coronavirus may have first appeared in China, for example, but it soon appeared everywhere, including the United States. When polio or dengue appears in this country, cases are usually linked to international travel.“It’s actually in the interest of American people to keep diseases down,” said Dr. Githinji Gitahi, who heads Amref Health Africa, a large nonprofit that relies on the United States for about 25 percent of its funding.“Diseases make their way to the U.S. even when we have our best people on it, and now we are not putting our best people on it,” he added.In interviews, more than 30 current and former officials of the United States Agency for International Development, members of health organizations and experts in infectious diseases described a world made more perilous than it was just a few weeks ago.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 outbreak has sickened nearly 200 people in Gaines County, Texas. A neighboring county in New Mexico has seen 21 new cases since Tuesday.A raging measles outbreak in West Texas, which has so far killed one child, has not abated and may have taken root in New Mexico, state health officials reported on Friday.The outbreak has sickened nearly 200 people — roughly 40 more cases than were reported on Tuesday — and has left 23 hospitalized in West Texas. Local health officials say even that number may be an undercount.Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the health and human services secretary, has faced criticism for his handling of the worsening outbreak. A prominent vaccine skeptic, Mr. Kennedy has offered muted support for vaccination and has emphasized untested treatments for measles, like cod liver oil.The outbreak has largely spread within a community of Mennonites in Gaines County, Texas, who historically have had lower vaccination rates and often avoid interacting with the health care system.Last year, roughly 82 percent of the county’s kindergarten population had received the measles vaccine. Experts say that vaccination rates must reach at least 95 percent to stave off outbreaks in a community.In a news release on Friday, Texas health officials wrote that more cases are “likely to occur,” because of the contagiousness of the virus.Health officials in Lea County, N.M. — which borders Gaines County — reported 30 measles cases on Friday, a substantial jump from the nine cases reported on Tuesday.While the cases in New Mexico have not officially been connected to the Texas outbreak, officials have said a link is “suspected.”On Thursday, state officials said an unvaccinated person who died in Lea County tested positive for the virus, though they have not yet confirmed that measles was the cause of death.Most of these cases along the New Mexico-Texas border have involved someone unvaccinated or with unknown vaccine status. Two doses of the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine prevent more than 97 percent of measles infections.Just 93 percent of kindergarten students nationwide had received the vaccine for measles, mumps and rubella in the 2023-24 school year, down from 95 percent before the pandemic, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.While symptoms typically resolve in a few weeks, measles can be extremely dangerous in rare cases. It may cause pneumonia, making it difficult for patients, especially children, to get oxygen into their lungs.The infection can also lead to brain swelling, which can cause lasting damage, including blindness, deafness and intellectual disabilities. For every 1,000 children who get measles, one or two will die, according to the C.D.C.The virus also causes “immune amnesia,” making the body unable to defend itself against illnesses it has already been exposed to and leaving patients more susceptible to future infections.A 2015 study found that before the M.M.R. vaccine was widely available, measles might have been responsible for up to half of all infectious disease deaths in children.

UK officials are checking for any possible cases of Lassa fever after a traveller to England, who has since returned to Nigeria, is known to have been infected.

2 hours ago

More than 60 percent of all voters — and 47 percent of Democrats — supported a work requirement for Medicaid, the country’s largest health insurance program.As Congressional Republicans weigh major cuts to Medicaid, most voters do not want to see the public health plan’s funding dialed back, according to a poll released Friday by KFF, a nonpartisan health research firm.Just 17 percent of respondents said they supported cuts to Medicaid, the government health insurance program that covers more than 70 million people. Forty percent said they wanted to keep spending unchanged, and 42 percent said they would like it increased.But at the same time, the poll found significant support for certain policies that would limit the program, such as requiring enrollees to work. More than 60 percent of voters — and 47 percent of Democrats — supported a work requirement, the poll found.That change, which has been championed by some congressional Republicans, is estimated to cut about $100 billion from Medicaid, as those who were unemployed — or could not file the paperwork showing they had a job — would no longer be covered. The program’s cost was $584 billion in 2024, or about 8 percent of total federal spending.More Than 70 Million Americans Are on Medicaid. This Is Where They Live.As Republicans weigh deep cuts, these congressional districts — some red, some blue — have the most to lose.The poll also illustrated Medicaid’s wide reach, with just over half of respondents saying that either they or a family member had at one point had Medicaid coverage. There was nearly universal agreement that Medicaid mattered to voters’ local communities, with 98 percent of Democrats and 94 percent of Republicans saying they thought it was somewhat or very important.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.

A hospital trust is investigating reports staff may have “inappropriately” accessed the medical records of the three people killed in the Nottingham attacks.

Two more people are reported dead from the disease, and dozens are in isolation, as the outbreak grows.The Ebola outbreak in Uganda has worsened significantly, and the country’s ability to contain the spread has been severely weakened by the Trump administration’s freeze on foreign assistance, American officials said this week.The officials, representing a variety of health and security agencies, made the assessment during a meeting with U.S. Embassy staff in Kampala, the Ugandan capital, on Wednesday. An audio recording of the session was obtained by The New York Times.There have been two more deaths, the mother and newborn sibling of a 4-year-old who died last week, an American official said. The mother and sibling died earlier than the 4-year-old, but were not identified as probable Ebola cases until after they were buried through belated contact tracing.Eighty-two people have so far been identified as close contacts of the mother and her two children, at high risk for infection, and 68 of them are now in quarantine while the others are still being traced. The officials said public health workers’ ability to trace their contacts and conduct surveillance for new cases is severely hindered without U.S. assistance.Two of the contacts are already symptomatic and have been admitted to an isolation hospital ward, an American official in Uganda said in the meeting. The 4-year-old was taken for treatment at four different health facilities before being diagnosed with Ebola, meaning that many of those who have potentially been exposed to the virus are health care workers.During the meeting Wednesday, American officials said that the Ugandan government also lacked sufficient laboratory supplies, diagnostic equipment and protective gear for medical workers and people tracing contacts. The termination of grants from the U.S. Agency for International Development was impeding the ability to procure those supplies, one official said. The meeting, conducted by video, was attended by representatives from the State Department, U.S.A.I.D., the Defense Department, the U.S. Embassy in Uganda and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.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.

22 minutes ago