Public health

Public health

Millions of people worldwide regularly drink the products, which are non-alcoholic and typically contain more than 150mg of caffeine per litre, very high glucose-based sugar content and varying quantities of other chemicals. Doctors in Nottingham, England, sounded the alarm after an otherwise fit and healthy man in his 50s had a stroke and was left with permanent numbness in his hands and feet. On questioning, he said he drank an average of eight energy drinks a day.

French health officials are working to trace all the contacts of two men who contracted Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS), a potentially deadly disease that typically only occurs in the Middle East. These cases of the disease are the country's first in 12 years, according to the French health ministry. The men, both of whom are in their 70s, are in a stable condition.

Ireen Makata sits in her white nursing uniform on a weathered bench at a health post in Malawi's southern Mulanje district. The facility is one of 13 in the district, located within a seminomadic, predominantly agricultural community 65km (40 miles) east of Blantyre, Malawi's commercial capital, near the Mulanje mountain range. The beige-painted facility stands out from the dozens of huts around it made of red bricks, with straw roofs.

East Bay parks officials say hikers should beware of an unusually large number of toxic and potentially deadly mushrooms sprouting across the region. The East Bay Regional Parks District issued an advisory Tuesday warning park visitors about the fast-growing fungi, which include the death cap and western destroying angel varieties. Both species benefitted from a spate of early-season rain storms that allowed them to appear in greater volume than usual for this time of the year.

"consistent with the theory that E-HE vehicles are less audible to pedestrians in urban areas where background ambient noise levels are higher."

Malaria remains a major public health concern, with many African nations being far from meeting their malaria elimination targets4,5. Vector control methods including indoor residual spraying and long-lasting insecticide-treated bed nets have played a pivotal role in reducing malaria incidence, but the emergence of insecticide-resistant mosquitoes has impeded further progress6. In addition, Africa's rapidly growing population and persistent malaria receptivity make these interventions increasingly unsustainable as standalone solutions.

Over the past year, I've noticed a pattern among some of my colleagues in public health, biomedical research, and the university settings in which I work. It's a strange, reflexive tic: Faced with bad-faith criticism from malign actors, we shrink back, saying, "Oh, it's not you. It's me," and walk onto their terrain with accommodation in our hearts. Some may think that, faced with the full fury of the far right, some kind of retreat is the only option.

San Francisco General Hospital's Ward 86 derived its name by being sited on the sixth floor of Building 80, an aging red brick tower on the north end of the sprawling hospital campus. It was the first HIV/AIDS outpatient clinic in the nation, opening its doors on Jan. 1, 1983. Until its abrupt closure after last week's stabbing of social worker Alberto Rangel, allegedly by one of the clinic's patients, it hosted a drop-in clinic five days a week.

Chirwa was in too much pain to speak she was in active labour. But she remembers feeling surprised. Why, Chirwa recalls, is she asking us not to mention that we were trying to have a home birth? This was the first pregnancy for Chirwa and her husband, Chifundo Bingala. Both are originally from Malawi, but moved to Cape Town, South Africa, for work: Chirwa found employment as a cleaner, and Bingala as a tailor.

Analyzing nearly 650 counties, cities and towns that have participated in the AARP Livability Index over the past decade, new Cornell research shows most have made progress developing communities conducive to aging in place across a range of metrics, from transportation to civic engagement. Some 31,000 other places that are not part of AARP's age-friendly network also made improvements, but to a lesser extent.

With that opening line, West Virginia's solicitor, Caleb B. David, urged a panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit to reverse its own ruling and reinstate the state's categorical Medicaid ban on gender-affirming surgery for transgender adults. The case, Anderson v. Crouch, had returned to the court after the U.S. Supreme Court vacated its ruling and remanded it for reconsideration following the high court's 2025 decision in U.S. v. Skrmetti, a case focused narrowly on restrictions for minors.

The view that aging is all downhill may be one that you implicitly believe in. How many times have you made jokes about your age, made jokes about someone else's age, or just looked in the mirror with despair at the toll time takes on your face? Yet, the media is full of images of people whose aging brings them joy rather than pain.

According to new research published today in JAMA, the rate of vitamin K shot refusals has risen nearly 80 percent in the U.S. between 2017 and 2024. The study, which examined medical records from more than five million births during that time period, found that the proportion of newborns who did not receive the injection climbed from 2.92 percent to 5.18 percent.

We have received complaints about some practitioners carrying out dermal filler and Botox injections on customers as young as 15.

Civil rights groups say these impacts resemble earlier patterns seen with highways, refineries and manufacturing: pollution concentrated where political resistance is weakest and property values are lowest. Data centers can also consume millions of gallons of water per day and use as much electricity as a small city, driving up energy and water use costs for poor residents. Zoom in: A supercomputer data center built by Elon Musk's xAI in Southwest Memphis, a historically Black neighborhood, faces a legal challenge from the NAACP.