Publisher Health

15 hours agoZac SherrattBBC News, South East

At least 124 cases of measles have been identified in Texas since late January, mostly among children and teenagers who are either unvaccinated or whose vaccination status is unknown, officials say.A child has died of measles in West Texas, the first known death from an outbreak of the disease that is spreading in the state and in neighboring New Mexico, officials said on Wednesday.Health officials in Lubbock and the Texas Department of State Health Services said in a statement that the patient was an unvaccinated school-age child who had died in the previous 24 hours.The officials did not release further information, but said that a news conference was planned for Wednesday afternoon at the Covenant Medical Center in Lubbock.At least 124 cases of measles have been identified in Texas since late January, mostly among children and teenagers who are either unvaccinated or whose vaccination status was unknown, Texas health officials say. Eighteen have been hospitalized.Measles is a highly contagious respiratory illness that can be life-threatening to anyone who is not protected against the virus.Doctors say the best way to protect against the disease is with two doses of a vaccine, which is usually administered to children as a combination measles-mumps-rubella, or MMR, vaccine. Two doses of the MMR vaccine prevent more than 97 percent of measles infections, according to Texas health officials.The South Plains region of Texas, where the outbreak has been spreading, has vaccination rates that lag significantly behind federal targets.New Mexico has also reported an outbreak, with nine cases in Lea County, in the southeastern part of the state, on the Texas border. Four of those cases are children under the age of 18, all of whom are unvaccinated, according to Robert Nott, a spokesman for the New Mexico Department of Health. None of the cases in New Mexico have led to hospitalizations, he said.The outbreak comes amid growing concerns among public health experts about declining vaccination rates and the confirmation of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a prominent vaccine skeptic, as the nation’s health secretary.Measles can be transmitted when an infected person breathes, coughs or sneezes. People who are infected will begin to have symptoms within a week or two after being exposed. Early symptoms include high fever, cough, runny nose and red, watery eyes. Within a few days, a telltale rash breaks out as flat, red spots on the face and then spreads down the neck and trunk to the rest of the body.Texas health officials have been holding vaccination clinics and encouraging people to get the MMR vaccine.

The terminations, which hit agencies involved in protecting the nation’s food supply and agricultural products, could have long-lasting consequences, experts said.Shortly after taking office for the second time, President Trump began making deep cuts to agencies and programs that play critical roles in human health, slashing funding for medical research, halting global health aid and firing scores of workers at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.But the campaign to downsize government, which has been led by Mr. Trump and Elon Musk, has also hollowed out agencies and programs devoted to protecting plant and animal health. The recent wave of mass firings hit federal workers responding to the nation’s growing bird flu outbreak, protecting crops from damaging pests and ensuring the safety of pet food and medicine, among other critical duties.Although the government has since rescinded some of these firings, the terminations — combined with a federal hiring freeze and buyout offers — are depleting the ranks of federal programs that are already short on employees and resources, experts said.The damage could be long-lasting. Workers whose jobs were spared said that the upheaval had left them eyeing the exits, and graduate students said they were reconsidering careers in the federal government. The shrinking work force could also have far-reaching consequences for trade and food security and leave the nation unequipped to tackle future threats to plant and animal health, experts said.“These really were indiscriminate firings,” said John Ternest, who lost his job at the U.S. Department of Agriculture, where he was preparing to conduct studies on honeybee health and crop pollination. “We don’t know what we’ve lost until it’s potentially too late.”Plant and animal inspectorsThe most recent wave of firings focused on the roughly 200,000 “probationary” employees across the federal government, who had fewer job protections because they were relatively new to their positions. (For some roles, the probationary period can be as long as three years, and it can also reset when longtime employees are promoted.)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.

Dr. Bryant Lin, who teaches medicine at Stanford University, was given a terminal diagnosis. He wanted his students to understand the humanity at the core of medicine.Dr. Bryant Lin stood before his class at Stanford in September, likely one of the last he would ever teach.Listen to this article with reporter commentaryJust 50 years old and a nonsmoker, he had been diagnosed with Stage 4 lung cancer four months earlier. The illness is terminal, and Dr. Lin estimated that he had roughly two years left before the drug he was taking stopped working. Instead of pulling back from work, he chose to spend the fall quarter teaching a course about his own illness.Registration for the class had filled up almost immediately. Now the room was overflowing, with some students forced to sit on the floor and others turned away entirely.“It’s quite an honor for me, honestly,” Dr. Lin said, his voice catching. “The fact that you would want to sign up for my class.”He told his students he wanted to begin with a story that explained why he chose to pursue medicine. He picked up a letter he had received years earlier from a patient dying of chronic kidney disease. The man and his family had made the decision to withdraw from dialysis, knowing he would soon die.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.

5 hours agoKen BanksBBC Scotland, Aberdeen

3 hours agoDebbie JacksonBBC Scotland News

Federal regulators will no longer require patients to provide blood tests before receiving the drug from pharmacies.The Food and Drug Administration has taken a crucial step toward expanding access to the antipsychotic medication clozapine, the only drug approved for treatment-resistant schizophrenia, among the most devastating of mental illnesses.The agency announced on Monday that it was eliminating a requirement that patients submit blood tests before their prescriptions can be filled.Clozapine, which was approved in 1989, is regarded by many physicians as the most effective available treatment for schizophrenia, and research shows that the drug significantly reduces suicidal behavior. Clozapine is also associated with a rare side effect called neutropenia, a drop in white blood cell counts that, in its most severe form, can be life-threatening.In 2015, federal regulators imposed a regimen known as risk evaluation and mitigation strategies, or REMS, that required patients to submit to weekly, biweekly and monthly blood tests that had to be uploaded onto a database and verified by pharmacists.Physicians have long complained that, as a result, clozapine is grossly underutilized.Dr. Frederick C. Nucifora, director of the Adult Schizophrenia Clinic at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, said he believed that around 30 percent of patients with schizophrenia would benefit from clozapine — far more than the 4 percent who currently take it.“I have had many patients who were doing terribly, who struggled to function outside the hospital, and cycled through many medications,” he said. “If they go on clozapine, they really tend to not be hospitalized again. I’ve had people go on to finish college and work. It’s quite remarkable.”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 chair of the Covid inquiry has ruled that evidence related to PPE Medpro, the firm linked to Baroness Michelle Mone and her husband Doug Barrowman, will be heard in a closed, private session next month.

GenBioPro, a leading manufacturer of abortion medication, is preparing to go to battle with the Trump administration.The country’s largest manufacturer of abortion pills is wading into the first major legal battle over abortion of President Trump’s second term.The company, GenBioPro, on Tuesday asked a Texas court to add it to the list of defendants in a lawsuit filed in October by three Republican state attorneys general. The move was a significant offensive action on an issue seen as a vanguard in the fight over access to abortion.The lawsuit was filed by the state attorneys general from Missouri, Idaho and Kansas, and asks a federal court to reverse a series of Food and Drug Administration regulations that have greatly expanded access to the abortion pill mifepristone.Under the Biden administration, the Justice Department defended the agency’s rules and F.D.A.’s approval of the medication 25 years ago. But many abortion rights advocates anticipate that the Trump administration will decline to defend the agency, effectively siding with the state attorneys general and using the case to limit access.If the judge grants GenBioPro’s request, the maneuver will allow the company to lead the defense of mifepristone. The company is being represented by Democracy Forward, a legal nonprofit that has filed more than a dozen lawsuits and won multiple court orders against the Trump administration.“The foundation of these extreme politicians’ arguments are purely political, rather than based in scientific evidence,” said Skye Perryman, the president and chief executive of Democracy Forward. “The threat this case brings to abortion access nationwide cannot be understated.”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.

Republicans have proposed lowering the federal share of costs for Medicaid expansions, which could reshape the program by gutting one of the Affordable Care Act’s major provisions.House Republicans hunting for ways to pay for President Trump’s tax cuts have called for cutting the federal government’s share of Medicaid spending, including a proposal that would effectively gut the Affordable Care Act’s 2014 expansion of the program.Cutting Medicaid spending, which is central to the budget bill that House Republicans may bring to a vote on Tuesday, could result in millions of Americans across the country losing health coverage unless states decide to play a bigger role in its funding.Republicans are considering lowering the 90 percent share that the federal government is required to pay to states that enroll participants in the expansion. The change could generate $560 billion in savings over a decade, money that Republicans want to use toward extending Mr. Trump’s 2017 tax cuts, which are set to expire at the end of 2025. Extending the tax cuts is expected to cost $4.5 trillion, meaning Republicans will have to find savings beyond Medicaid from a long menu of options.A move to lower federal spending on the Medicaid expansion population could effectively gut the program. Around 10 states that have expanded their programs have so-called trigger laws that reverse the Medicaid expansion if the federal government decreases funding for the population.The change could leave the 40 states that participate in the Obamacare program with a difficult set of choices. They could shoulder the extra costs to preserve Medicaid coverage for millions, make cuts to coverage or look for cuts from other large government programs to offset the reduction in federal funds.Medicaid, which covers more than 70 million people, is the largest health insurance program in the nation, and the largest single source of funding for states. More than 21 million adults who were not eligible for Medicaid under pre-expansion guidelines received coverage last year. The program had previously restricted enrollment primarily to those who were pregnant, disabled or elderly.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.