Donald Trump is the face of these cuts, but the cruelty of his administration is not the only story. After leaping upward in the 2000s, global giving for health grew very slowly through the 2010s. The culture of philanthropy has changed somewhat, too, with the age of the Giving Pledge — in which hundreds of the world’s richest people promised …
Read More »Tag Archives: Epidemics
Genetic Study Retraces Covid’s Origins in Bats
In the early 2000s, a coronavirus infecting bats jumped into raccoon dogs and other wild mammals in southwestern China. Some of those animals were sold in markets, where the coronavirus jumped again, into humans. The result was the SARS pandemic, which spread to 33 countries and claimed 774 lives. A few months into it, scientists discovered the coronavirus in mammals …
Read More »A Second Child Dies of Measles in Texas
The measles crisis in West Texas has claimed the life of another child, the second death in an outbreak that has burned through the region and infected dozens of residents in bordering states. The eight-year-old girl died of “measles pulmonary failure” at a hospital in Lubbock, Texas, according to records obtained by The New York Times. It is the second …
Read More »Why Measles Outbreaks May Be the New Normal
As the Trump administration moves to dismantle international public health safeguards, pull funding from local health departments and legitimize health misinformation, some experts now fear that the country is setting the stage for a long-term measles resurgence. If federal health officials do not change course, large multistate outbreaks like the one that has torn through West Texas, jumping to neighboring …
Read More »C.D.C. Cuts Threaten to Set Back the Nation’s Health, Critics Say
The extensive layoffs of federal health workers that began on Tuesday will greatly curtail the scope and influence of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the world’s premier public health agency, an outcome long sought by conservatives critical of its handling of the Covid-19 pandemic. The reorganization of the Department of Health and Human Services shrinks the C.D.C. by …
Read More »For John Green, It’s Tuberculosis All the Way Down
Nolen: The first TB patient that I sat down with in Nairobi was a man who had extensively drug-resistant tuberculosis, or XDR-TB — essentially there’s a just a very slim chance that the only drugs we know about will actually cure him. We’re out of options. And he’d come in that day, like he had very optimistically every day for …
Read More »Measles Cases in Kansas May Be Linked to Texas Outbreak
Measles cases in Kansas more than doubled in the last week, bringing the tally to 20, while another outbreak in Ohio has sickened 10 people, local public health officials reported on Wednesday. There have been several large outbreaks in the United States this year, including one in West Texas that has spread to more than 320 people and hospitalized 40. …
Read More »H.H.S. Scraps Studies of Vaccines and Treatments for Future Pandemics
The Trump administration has canceled funding for dozens of studies seeking new vaccines and treatments for Covid-19 and other pathogens that may cause future pandemics. The government’s rationale is that the Covid pandemic has ended, which “provides cause to terminate Covid-related grant funds,” according to an internal N.I.H. document viewed by The New York Times. But the research was not …
Read More »For Some Measles Patients, Vitamin A Remedy Supported by RFK Jr. Leaves Them More Ill
Doctors in West Texas are seeing measles patients whose illnesses have been complicated by an alternative therapy endorsed by vaccine skeptics including Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the health secretary. Parents in Gaines County, Texas, the center of a raging measles outbreak, have increasingly turned to supplements and unproven treatments to protect their children, many of whom are unvaccinated, against the …
Read More »Texas Measles Outbreak May Continue for a Year, Officials Say
As containment efforts falter, the measles outbreak in West Texas is likely to persist for a year, perhaps even setting back the country’s hard-fought victory over the virus, according to Texas health officials. As of Friday, the outbreak had sickened more than 300 people in Texas since January; 40 have been hospitalized. One child has died from the disease, the …
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