Health

A medical worker in protective suit collects a swab from a resident at a makeshift nucleic acid testing site, following cases of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) in Shanghai, China March 11, 2022. — Reuters  GENEVA: Five years ago on Tuesday, the World Health Organisation (WHO) announced COVID-19 had become a pandemic — a moment when the world finally woke up to the …

Republican leaders in Congress have directed the committee that oversees Medicaid to cut $880 billion from the next budget. They say these cuts aren’t necessarily aimed at Medicaid, the insurance program for 72 million poor and disabled Americans. The cuts could come from Medicare, for instance. But Trump has vowed not to touch that very popular program. And a sum …

A photomicrograph provided by the CDC depicts a case of primary amebic meningoencephalitis, a rare brain infection due to Naegleria fowleri, a brain-eating amoeba. — Reuters KARACHI: Pakistan has reported its first fatality from Naegleria fowleri this year, as a 36-year-old woman from Gulshan-e-Iqbal, Karachi, succumbed to the brain-eating amoeba, the Sindh Health Department confirmed on Monday. According to officials, …

We asked 19 photographers to revisit their most enduring images of the coronavirus pandemic, five years after the virus became a global threat. Their photographs transport us to that bewildering period in an uncanny sort of time travel. The journalists who captured these scenes were not just covering the Covid-19 story but living through it. To bear witness at a …

More than 100,000 Americans are on waiting lists for donor organs, most needing a kidney. Only 25,000 human donor kidneys become available each year. Twelve Americans on the kidney list die every day on average. Scientists first transplanted genetically engineered pig organs into other animals and then to brain-dead human patients. In 2022, researchers received permission to transplant the organs …

Shot administered without prior lab testing, hospital sources reveal. Use of injection stopped; inquiry committee formed to investigate. Prof Dr Israr-ul-Haq leads committee; official notification issued. LAHORE: A female patient receiving treatment at Mayo Hospital died and 15 others suffered adverse reactions allegedly due to an injection administered at the Chest Ward of the medical facility. Three of the affected …

A representational image of a teen sleeping. — Unsplash/File A new study has suggested that teens who sleep fewer than 7.7 hours each night are more likely to have high blood pressure issues. Similarly, those going through both insomnia and a lack of sleep are five times more likely to have high blood pressure exceeding 140 systolic, according to research presented …

Flo Fox, an indomitable photographer who was born blind in one eye and later lost her vision in the other from multiple sclerosis, which also eventually paralyzed her from the neck down, but who never stopped shooting what she called the “ironic reality” of New York’s streetscape, died on March 2 in her apartment in Manhattan. She was 79. Her …

A charity is taking support services on the road with its “wheels of wellness” van ahead of the opening of a permanent site. The iCan organisation offers help on a range of fitness and wellbeing issues and is set to join a number of partner groups based in a former bank in Whitehaven town centre to be known as Hope …

BBC Chris, not his real name, started missing work because of his involvement in chemsex A man drawn into the world of having sex while high on illegal drugs has described how he became a “zombie” whose life was slowly deteriorating. Chris – whose name has been changed – told the BBC he started to take part in chemsex, short …