public-health
48 stories tagged "public-health"
Ghana's 1.7 Million 'Climate' Diarrhea Cases Come From a Model Where Risk Falls in the Hottest Months
Built on a UK-led official-statistics framework, the estimate compares 12 years of Ghanaian weather against a benchmark set by a rule that resolved to the 95th percentile. It does not measure climate change, and each weather exposure accounts for 5.5 percent of cases.
Nutrition & FoodOf 28 Links Between Everyday Drinks and Mouth Bacteria, Alcohol Claimed 25
A federal study of 5,598 Americans tied alcohol, mostly beer and liquor, to 25 of 28 links between drinks and mouth bacteria. It landed months after the Dietary Guidelines dropped their daily drink limits.
Infectious DiseaseThe Hepatitis B Shot America Calls Essential on Day One: Ontario Gives It in Grade 7
Ontario's routine hepatitis B program starts in grade 7, and Canada reported four acute cases in children under 15 in 2021. In the U.S., a court order keeps the universal shot in the first hours of life.
Nutrition & FoodNon-Dairy Creamer Overtook Sugar as the Biggest Source of Added Calories in American Coffee
Average coffee intake barely moved between 2003 and 2018, yet its calories climbed from 43 to 60 a day, and non-dairy creamer, not sugar, drove most of the rise.
InvestigationsWe Were Told to Disinfect Everything. The Chlorine Gas Calls Never Came Back Down.
US poison centers logged a 39.8 percent jump in chlorine gas exposures the year disinfection messaging peaked. Through 2022 here and 2025 in France, the numbers never came back down.
InvestigationsThe WHO Asked the World to Listen to Mental Health Patients. By Its Own Count, Half Were Committed Against Their Will.
The WHO built this year's World Mental Health Day around putting patients in charge of policy. Its own 2024 atlas reports 49% of reported admissions are involuntary and nearly a quarter of hospital stays run past a year.
InvestigationsNew York Keeps 51 Cents of Every Dollar Its Gamblers Lose, and the Addiction Tripwire It Just Proposed Doesn't Trip Until a $10,000 Single-Day Deposit
New York taxes sportsbooks on the money bettors lose at 51 percent and has booked $3.89 billion since 2022. The at-risk rules its Gaming Commission proposed October 9 adopt New Jersey's model, whose deposit trigger DraftKings already meets: more than $10,000 in a single day.
InvestigationsMedical Chatbots Reached African Patients Before the Benchmark Meant to Grade Them
More than 500,000 people in Kenya texted an AI maternal-health line in 2024. The money to test tools like it arrived in 2026, and the global yardstick to grade them is still being built.
Infectious DiseaseActors Faked Bird Flu at 69 ERs and Clinics, and Triage Still Asked the 2016 Question
The actor's secret was a sick duck from Central Park, and only 7 of 73 triage desks asked about animals. Ten years after New York's first mystery-patient drills, the front door got slower.
InvestigationsYour Country's Estimated Heat Death Toll Depends on Which Heat Metric the Modelers Picked
Japan recorded 1,522 heatstroke deaths in 2020. One model called that unusually high; a better-fitting one put it inside the expected range. Europe's estimated heat tolls bend to the same kind of choice.
Infectious DiseaseA Week of Immunology, a Shared Hotel and a 'Transformative' Claim With No Alumni Count
Nine IUIS educators call their one-week immunology courses in low- and middle-income countries transformative. Their 2022 guidelines say the committee's budget partly funds 3 courses a year, and the program's 2019 self-assessment measured enjoyment and quiz scores, not careers.
Brain & AgingIn a Toronto Husky Study, Owners Moved First More Than Twice as Often as Their Dogs
Earlier sensor studies had the dog moving and the owner following. Among 22 synchronized Toronto owner-dog pairs, the human led in 10 and the dog in 4, and bedsharing showed no significant link to owners' measured sleep.
Infectious DiseaseForty-Five Years After Acyclovir, the FDA's Herpes Headline Is a Warning Letter to Amazon
Some 520 million people carry the virus behind most genital herpes, and no drug clears it. The FDA's October move was a warning letter over herpes ointments and washes sold on Amazon.
Infectious DiseaseA Siberian Plague Lab Lost a Scientist, and Moscow Is Asking for the Trust It Burned at Sverdlovsk
Daria Shipilova, 28, studied plague in Irkutsk until a severe pneumonia killed her, and about 200 people were quarantined. The biology says stay calm. The history says make Moscow show its work.
Drugs & FDAThe FDA's Former Biologics Chief Says Public Health Can't See the Next Disaster Coming
Vinay Prasad ran the FDA's biologics center until this spring. His warning: the apparatus chases lettuce recalls and measles while a blood test for dozens of cancers heads toward Medicare with its central question unanswered.
InvestigationsThe MAHA Summit Charged Corporations Up to $300,000 for a Seat Beside the Officials Who Regulate Them
UnitedHealth got a panel. Grail, whose cancer test sat before the FDA, helped foot the bill. The regenerative ranchers and pesticide experts were nowhere on the program.
Infectious DiseaseCzech Trust in Government Fell to 19 Percent. Eight to Ten Weeks Later, the Death Rate Pulled Away from Austria's.
A populist government overstated its testing, cycled through health ministers, and governed by press conference. Czechs stopped believing it, and a new analysis ties that collapse of faith to a death rate that ran roughly twice the European average.
InvestigationsFifty Sworn Witnesses, 1,400 Who Applied, and Not One Official From Health Canada
A sitting MP put Canadians who say the COVID shots injured them under oath on Parliament Hill. Health Canada, which authorized the products and tracks their harms, sent no one.
InvestigationsAn 'A' for the Air Outside, Nearly Three Times Dirtier Inside
The EPA rated one Virginia region's outdoor air a clean 'A.' Inside the public-housing apartments of elderly and disabled residents, fine-particle pollution ran nearly three times higher, the air most long-term pollution studies miss.
Infectious DiseaseThe FDA Is Fighting a Flesh-Eating Parasite We Eradicated in 1966 With a Flea Pill From 2000
Nitenpyram was approved in 2000 to kill fleas. It is now the emergency tool against a parasite the United States wiped out in 1966, after the sterile-fly barrier that kept the screwworm out was breached in 2023.
Infectious DiseaseA 2014 Trial Warned That Correcting Vaccine Fears Backfires on the Hesitant. Public Health Corrected Harder.
A randomized trial found that correcting MMR-autism fears left the most hesitant parents less likely to vaccinate. A decade later, a panel of credentialed doctors in Sydney shows the trust cost of correcting harder anyway.
CancerDecades of Cancer Warning Signs, and Still No Proof They Save Lives
England's cancer-awareness campaigns sent more people to the doctor for a decade. The reviews still can't show they caught a single cancer earlier or cut deaths, while the cancers that kill fastest stay silent until it's already too late.
InvestigationsPennsylvania Announced Two Measles Deaths Its County Coroner Never Recorded
Pennsylvania classified two Lancaster County fatalities as measles-associated, including a newborn the county coroner says he certified as dying from a ruptured spleen and blood loss. The CDC won't add either to the national count until the record shows measles caused or contributed to the deaths.
Infectious DiseaseFor Sixty Years the Screwworm Was Gone. It's Back in Texas, and the FDA Reached for Its COVID-Era Emergency Powers.
The flesh-eating fly the US wiped out in 1966 has crossed the southern border into Texas, and Washington's answer leans on the same emergency law it used for COVID drugs, this time to slap an emergency label on Zoetis's best-selling dog pill.