When seniors need full-time institutional care, or when the injured or debilitated require similar 24/7 attention, loved ones — and even friends — must take care to read and re-read any documents that nursing homes and other long-term care facilities shove before them to sign during the stressful admissions process. That’s because the owners and….
Continue ReadingInfections
Big shakeups under way in much-criticized U.S. health agencies
While most regular folks wouldn’t give a hill of beans about the organization of bureaucracies in Washington, D.C., frustrated taxpayers should be taking note of seismic rumblings about restructurings that are shaking some of the biggest, most powerful, and influential federal health agencies. Biden Administration officials, in one of their notable moves, have announced that….
Continue ReadingWHO chief declares monkeypox outbreak a global health emergency
The worldwide struggle to contain a fast-spreading outbreak of monkeypox took on new urgency, with the World Health Organization declaring a global emergency and U.S. experts discussing whether the viral infection is becoming yet another significant sexually transmitted disease that this country is ill-prepared to quell. The WHO declaration, by WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus,….
Continue ReadingSuperbug deaths & antibiotic abuse surged during pandemic
With the coronavirus pandemic surging anew due to the highly infectious Omicron BA.5 variant, federal authorities reported recent data that should give Americans plenty of reason to heed public health warnings and avoid hospitalization if they possibly can. That’s in part because institutions, overwhelmed by the pandemic, have taken giant steps backward in preventing patients….
Continue ReadingPopular, costly knee injections little better than placebo, big study finds
Since the 1970s, some doctors have treated arthritic knees by injecting them with hyaluronic acid, a substance originally derived from the combs of roosters. Specialists have zealously promoted this therapy, costing patients a few hundred dollars a pop and repeated so widely that Medicare alone pays $300 million annually for it. Doctors argue it reduces….
Continue ReadingThe U.S. summer of 2022: Infectious outbreaks and vital vaccines
In the 21st century, in the wealthiest and supposedly most advanced nation on the planet, infectious diseases and vaccines continue to be major part of the news headlines. Experts and regular folks are paying attention to the persistent coronavirus pandemic, a stubborn and apparently widening outbreak of monkeypox, and a startling spike of meningitis and….
Continue ReadingCovid vaccines Okayed for babies and tots. What will parents do?
Parents with little kids — those ages 6 months to 5 years old — now must decide whether, how, and when to get these babies and tots their coronavirus vaccines, newly approved by federal regulators. They should talk with their pediatricians and others with medical expertise and experience. The American Academy of Pediatricians, a leading….
Continue ReadingMore shots coming to battle stubborn, still deadly coronavirus pandemic
The coronavirus pandemic stubbornly persists, infecting 110,000 Americans daily — and likely many, many more — and hospitalizing 29,000 a day on average. Vaccinations, also, have stayed at the forefront of efforts to deal with the disease, with shots on the brink of being regulator-approved and imminently available for the littlest of kids, and against….
Continue ReadingBaby formula mess shows big profits, a filthy plant, and bungled oversight
The giant drug maker Abbott and the federal Food and Drug Administration both should hang their heads in shame as more information becomes public as to how they left millions of vulnerable infants hungry and put kids’ health at risk by wrongs involving the manufacture and distribution of a vital foodstuff — baby formula. Millions….
Continue ReadingFocus on surging pandemic dims as two other infections grab headlines
The coronavirus pandemic continues to give Americans a crash course in global infectious diseases, with experts and regular folks warily watching not only the virus’s continuing summer surge but also seeing with concern increasing incidences of rare hepatitis cases in kids and outbreaks of monkeypox in travelers and among partying gay men. While the other….
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