Public health

Public health

The rate of children and teenagers living with high blood pressure globally has nearly doubled because of a toxic combination of unhealthy diets, mass inactivity and soaring levels of obesity, according to the largest review of its kind. Experts said 114 million children who have developed hypertension even before reaching adulthood were facing potentially deadly and lifelong harm, including cardiovascular disease, kidney disease and a myriad of serious health complications.

More than 80% of donor funding for family planning comes from countries that have announced aid cuts, according to a report released last week by the global partnership FP2030. The US was the biggest donor, accounting for 41% of the total between 2020 and 2024. The fall in aid has led to the closure of maternal and reproductive health services, with devastating consequences in countries that relied heavily on USAID.

It recently emerged that a whistleblower from CHI made an unprotected disclosure in August regarding the late Harvey Morrison (9). The child suffered from spina bifida and scoliosis and waited in pain for nearly three years for spinal surgery. The whistleblower alleged he was mistakenly taken off the waiting list because he was deemed to be in palliative care. CHI said it only received the protected disclosure from the HSE on Monday.

To provide for a variety of trips through micromobility sharing, a lot of attention is given to solving the first- and last-mile connection for residents in large cities. Programs like bike- and scooter-share don't fill that gap, but ride-hailing services like Lyft and Uber can. Combined with public transport networks that incorporate buses, trams, and subways, most people would be forgiven for assuming that Americans across the country have access to so much choice that

Since emerging in 1996, highly pathogenic H5N1 viruses of the A/goose/Guangdong lineage have spread globally through enzootic transmission in domestic poultry in Asia and Africa, paired with occasional cross-continental movement by wild birds of the Anseriformes (ducks, geese, swans) and Charadriiformes (shorebirds) orders3,4,5,6,7,8,9. In 2005, introduction of poultry-derived H5N1 viruses into wild birds in China led to viral dispersal across Northern Africa and Asia, establishing new lineages of endemic circulation in poultry10,11.

Every time you fire up your cooktop, you're releasing pollutants like oil mist and smoke into the air. Without proper ventilation, those particles can drift deep into your lungs, where they can cause irritation ( or worse). Since becoming privy to this information, I've been vigilant about ventilation (and real fun at dinner parties). Unfortunately, the only exhaust in my otherwise lovely apartment is the seemingly-useless fan built into my over-the-range microwave-though,

"I remember working with Esme Wren and Hannah Barnes and Deb Cohen and we were looking at the question of the Tavistock," she said. "This was the only gender identity development service for the under-16s. "We questioned why it wasn't data led, why it seemed to be so arbitrary with the kind of recommendations and advice and even the [puberty] blockers they were handing out to young people. "The work we did actually led to the closure of the Tavistock."

Women should not suffer through menopause with hot flashes, night sweats and poor sleep. That's the message from FDA Commissioner Dr. Marty Makary. The agency announced it will remove "black box" warning labels from estrogen-based hormone therapy, which treat the symptoms of menopause, saying the warnings have made women scared to try the therapy and doctors reluctant to prescribe it.

Research shows getting treatment quickly is crucial, with every four-week delay reducing patient survival by an average of 10%. Dr Timothy Hanna, a leading global expert on cancer who led that research, said the BBC findings were "worrying". "It's not a few outliers. It's the norm for trusts in England to not hit these waiting time targets and they are set for a reason - timely treatment can improve survival rates."

In August, 2005, Anand Irimpen, a cardiologist and a professor at Tulane University, evacuated New Orleans during the approach of Hurricane Katrina. He and his family watched it make landfall from a hotel room in Dallas. "The storm passed by and I was ready to go home," Irimpen told me. "But then my wife said, 'The levees broke. We can't go back.'" The damage to New Orleans lingered; they ended up staying in Dallas for months.

Health care is at the heart of the longest federal government shutdown in U.S. history. That shutdown is on the brink of ending, but the health care issue that started it is still not resolved. Since 2021, people who buy their health care on the Affordable Care Act marketplaces have had extra help -- in the form of tax credits -- to buy their plans.

This fall, multiple states including Maryland, Virginia, Tennessee and Wisconsin have reported outbreaks of hand, foot and mouth disease, a contagious virus that commonly infects children under 5 but can also cause symptoms in older kids and adults, too. "This year, [cases seem] to be out of control," said Dr. Allison Agwu, a professor of adult and pediatric infectious diseases at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore.

The Microsoft founder is heavily involved with programs to prevent disease across the globe, efforts that will likely ramp up in the coming years after he issued his philanthropic foundation with a task: He would donate the vast majority of his wealth, some $100 billion, to the body as long as the funds are spent within the next 20 years.

His two-year-old daughter died first, then his mother, then his wife. But Bope Mpona Heritier still had no idea what illness had taken their lives. Then the 25-year-old also began to develop symptoms. When his blood was tested and sent to the Democratic Republic of the Congo's capital, Kinshasa, the results confirmed he had the Ebola virus. I felt pain everywhere, he says. I had a migraine, a sharp pain in my eyes and throat, and I was vomiting.

Flu strikes every winter, but this year something seems to be different. A seasonal flu virus suddenly mutated in the summer. It appears to evade some of our immunity, has kick-started a flu season more than a month early, and is a type of flu that history suggests is more severe. The NHS has now issued a "flu jab SOS" as fears grow that this will add up to a brutal winter. There is a lot of nuance and uncertainty, but leading flu experts have told me they would not be shocked if this was the worst flu season for a decade.

Instead, he spends that time sifting through the online appointment requests to work out what each patient needs. Last week there were 84 requests, and the week before it was more than 100. "It's relentless - you get about two minutes to look at each," Dr Turner says. "We're getting lots of requests we would not have had previously - questions like, 'Should I take this food supplement?' Previously patients would not have bothered GPs with things like that."

Aquil Basheer believed that ending gang violence wasn't the kind of career you just fall into. "In this type of work, you're usually chosen. You don't choose it," he said in 2024 in an interview for "The Storytelling Project," an L.A. County Public Health Department project that documented the effects of violence on local individuals and communities. Basheer, it seems, was among the chosen.

The pomegranates, squash and apples were in season, pink guavas were so ripe you could smell their heady scent from a distance, and nutrient-packed yams were ready for the holidays. But with federal funding in limbo for the 1.5 million people in Los Angeles County who depend on food aid from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program - or SNAP - the church parking lot hosting the market was largely devoid of customers.