Health
Indonesia’s government has urged healthcare facilities to step up COVID-19 surveillance, as a more transmissible omicron subvariant drives a surge in cases across Asia. Parts of Asia have been reporting a new wave of infections since last month, especially Thailand, Hong Kong, Malaysia and Singapore. The new spread of
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The US Food and Drug Administration has approved Moderna’s next-generation COVID-19 vaccine for everyone aged 65 and above, the company said on Saturday, the first endorsement since the regulator tightened requirements. The vaccine has also been approved for people aged 12 to 64 with at least one or more
Health
A cholera outbreak in Sudan’s capital has killed 70 people in two days, health officials said, as Khartoum battles a fast-spreading epidemic amid a collapse of basic services. The health ministry for Khartoum State said it had recorded 942 new infections and 25 deaths on Wednesday, following 1,177
Health
Thailand has reported its first anthrax-related death with two infections nationwide, prompting a public health alert after authorities identified hundreds potentially exposed to the deadly bacteria, officials said on Thursday. A 53-year-old man in Mukdahan province, in northeastern Thailand near the border with Laos, died on Wednesday after contracting anthrax,
Health
Global aid funding cuts, led by the United States, are disrupting efforts to vaccinate children against deadly diseases almost as much as the COVID-19 pandemic did, the United Nations said on Thursday. Outbreaks of infectious diseases, including measles, meningitis and yellow fever, have been increasing globally. Emergency and routine vaccinations
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The European Commission said Wednesday that it had given formal approval for Leqembi, a long-awaited new treatment for early-stage Alzheimer’s disease, to be sold in the EU under strict conditions. The authorization was granted Tuesday based on a favorable decision by Europe’s medicines watchdog, which after initial misgivings
Health
The World Health Organization has raised serious concerns over a sharp global rise in cholera infections and deaths, warning that the disease is spreading to new regions and threatening vulnerable populations already burdened by conflict and climate-related crises. Speaking in Geneva on Friday, Dr. Philippe Barboza, cholera team lead at
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Tuberculosis (TB) infections among children in the European region rose 10 percent in 2023, indicating ongoing transmission and the need for immediate public health measures to control the spread, the World Health Organization said on Monday. WHO’s European region, which comprises 53 countries in Europe and Central Asia, reported
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Five-year-old Shado is one of dozens of children being rushed to a health center in the US state of Texas to get the measles vaccine, after the recent death in the area of a child who was not immunized against the highly contagious virus. “Look at you, you’re so
Health
A suspected outbreak of the Marburg virus in northwest Tanzania has infected nine people, killing eight of them, the World Health Organization has said, weeks after an outbreak of the disease was declared over in neighboring Rwanda. The viral hemorrhagic fever has a fatality rate as high as 88 percent,
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An outbreak of Human Metapneumovirus (HMPV) in China has raised alarm globally. Several countries, including India, are monitoring the virus and its spread closely. But should one worry about it? How is this virus similar to the COVID-19 virus? What are its symptoms, and what have experts said so far?
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Scientists said Monday that electrically stimulating a particular region in the brain could help people with injured spinal cords walk more easily, with one patient describing how the technique allowed him to conquer his fear of stairs. The new technique is intended for people with spinal cord injuries where the
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Sudanese doctor Mohamed Moussa has grown so accustomed to the constant sound of gunfire and shelling near his hospital that it no longer startles him. Instead, he simply continues attending to his patients. "The bombing has numbed us," the 30-year-old general practitioner told AFP by phone from Al-Nao
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President-elect Donald Trump on Monday held a wide-ranging news conference in which he said he would preserve access to the polio vaccine but equivocated on other vaccines, pledged to look at bringing down the costs of pharmaceuticals and expressed doubts that his daughter-in-law might be Florida’s next senator. Trump
Health
Ominike Marvis has lost count of the number of times her 6-year-old son has had malaria. So when Nigeria started offering a malaria vaccine, she was eager to protect her youngest child. She took the 6-month-old baby to get his first shot at a health center in hard-hit Bayelsa state,
Health
There were around 11 million more cases of malaria in 2023 than in 2022, up to an estimated 263 million, according to a new World Health Organization report, marking another year of negligible progress against the age-old killer. There were 597,000 deaths, a similar total to 2022, the vast