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Category: Health

To ease the world food crisis, focus resources on women and girls

To ease the world food crisis, focus resources on women and girls

Elizabeth Bryan, Claudia Ringler, and Nicole Lefore write: In the wake of Russia’s war on Ukraine, the global community is scrambling. The World Bank, the G7 group of the world’s largest developed economies, the European Union and the United States have collectively pledged more than US$40 billion to avert food and humanitarian crises (see Supplementary information). Yet these massive funds are unlikely to get women and girls the help they need. The investments might even exacerbate inequalities. Crises hit women…

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U.S. life expectancy falls again in ‘historic’ setback

U.S. life expectancy falls again in ‘historic’ setback

The New York Times reports: The average life expectancy of Americans fell precipitously in 2020 and 2021, the sharpest two-year decline in nearly 100 years and a stark reminder of the toll exacted on the nation by the continuing coronavirus pandemic. In 2021, the average American could expect to live until the age of 76, federal health researchers reported on Wednesday. The figure represents a loss of almost three years since 2019, when Americans could expect to live, on average,…

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Bacteria’s immune sensors reveal a novel way to detect viruses

Bacteria’s immune sensors reveal a novel way to detect viruses

Annie Melchor writes: “All of the life forms on Earth have the same problem,” said Jonathan Kagan, an immunology researcher at Boston Children’s Hospital. “And that is dealing with infection.” Just as we worry about bacterial infections, bacteria are on the watch for the viruses called phages that infect them, and — like every organism across every kingdom of life — they have evolved an arsenal of molecular tools to fight infections. Large, complex creatures like humans can splurge on…

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Probing the mystery of Japan’s light Covid toll

Probing the mystery of Japan’s light Covid toll

Neil Seeman writes: In light of Japan’s decision last week to waive pre-departure COVID-19 tests for vaccinated inbound travelers, it is worthwhile to consider that its strong performance over the first two years of the pandemic may have had less to do with policy than with culture. In a study published this summer in the Canadian Medical Association Journal, Dr. Fahad Razak and colleagues at the University of Toronto examined COVID-19 outcomes in Canada, Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the…

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Climate change has already aggravated 58% of infectious diseases

Climate change has already aggravated 58% of infectious diseases

Eos reports: The consequences of climate change aren’t reserved for the oceans and atmosphere: Diseases have secured a larger presence in recent years thanks to global warming. In a sweeping analysis of more than 800 published studies, scientists from the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa (UHM) discovered climate change had exacerbated 58% of infectious diseases in certain documented instances. Although less common, climate warming also lessened 16% of infectious diseases. “We never imagined the magnitude of diseases impacted by climate…

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How to rest well

How to rest well

Alex Soojung-Kim Pang writes: Downtime is undervalued in today’s busy, always-on world. But for most of human history, rest – time in which we can recharge the mental and physical batteries we use while labouring – was prized as a gift. To Aristotle, work was drudgery and necessity; only in leisure could we cultivate our mental and moral abilities, and become better people. In The Sabbath (1951), Rabbi Abraham Heschel argued that, in Judaism, this day of rest was more…

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Why the defense of abortion in Kansas is so powerful

Why the defense of abortion in Kansas is so powerful

Sarah Smarsh writes: Lines of Kansas voters, resolute in the August sun and 100-degree heat, stretched beyond the doors of polling sites and wrapped around buildings on Tuesday to cast ballots in a primary election. A few suffered heat exhaustion. Firefighters passed out bottles of water. When polls closed at 7 p.m. Central time, many were still in line and legally entitled to get their turn. The Wichita Eagle reported that one Wichita woman cast the final vote at her…

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How abortion rights supporters won in conservative Kansas

How abortion rights supporters won in conservative Kansas

The New York Times reports: Going into Election Day, many observers believed the outcome of the referendum would be determined in increasingly Democratic areas like the Kansas City suburbs — that is, by whether enough voters turned out there to compensate for the very conservative lean of the rest of the state. But abortion opponents did surprisingly poorly even in the reddest places. Consider far western Kansas, a rural region along the Colorado border that votes overwhelmingly Republican. In Hamilton…

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Monkeypox is about to become the next public health failure

Monkeypox is about to become the next public health failure

Scott Gottlieb writes: When about 100 cases of ‌‌monkeypox had been confirmed or suspected in Europe‌ in May, it was clear the virus was spreading outside the areas where it was previously seen‌‌. Some on social media ‌‌suggested it might already be ‌spreading rapidly in communities in Europe and the ‌United States. These reports should have been a code red for federal infectious disease response. But it wasn’t until late June that the C‌enters for Disease Control and Prevention expanded…

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States opposed to abortion are more willing to let mothers and children die

States opposed to abortion are more willing to let mothers and children die

The New York Times reports: In Mississippi, which brought the abortion case that ended Roe v. Wade before the Supreme Court, Gov. Tate Reeves vowed that the state would now “take every step necessary to support mothers and children.” Today, however, Mississippi fares poorly on just about any measure of that goal. Its infant and maternal mortality rates are among the worst in the nation. State leaders have rejected the Affordable Care Act’s Medicaid expansion, leaving an estimated 43,000 women…

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Covid origin studies say evidence points to Wuhan market

Covid origin studies say evidence points to Wuhan market

BBC News reports: Scientists say there is “compelling evidence” that Wuhan’s Huanan seafood and wildlife market was at the centre of the Covid-19 outbreak. Two peer-reviewed studies published on Tuesday re-examine information from the initial outbreak in the Chinese city. One of the studies shows that the earliest known cases were clustered around that market. The other uses genetic information to track the timing of the outbreak. It suggests there were two variants introduced into humans in November or early…

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Extreme heat makes pregnancy more dangerous

Extreme heat makes pregnancy more dangerous

Yale Climate Connections reports: Esther Sanchez’s pregnancy this summer has coincided with extreme heat in Madrid, Spain, where she lives. Overnight temperatures there have been particularly uncomfortable. One recent morning, her living room was still 88 degrees Fahrenheit [31 C] at 6 a.m. “So it was impossible to sleep and to rest and have a normal day — a normal life,” she said. For many pregnant people — a group that can include women, girls, transgender men, and nonbinary people…

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How preventing unwanted pregnancies can help on climate

How preventing unwanted pregnancies can help on climate

Robert N. Proctor and Londa Schiebinger write: Every year, some 36 billion tons of anthropogenic carbon enter the atmosphere, mainly as a result of burning fossil fuels. With 8 billion people on Earth, this means that each human adds an average of 4.5 tons of carbon into the air annually. And wealthy people have a far bigger footprint than the poor — by a couple orders of magnitude. Too often ignored in devising solutions to slow global warming is the…

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WHO declares monkeypox spread a global health emergency

WHO declares monkeypox spread a global health emergency

The New York Times reports: For the second time in two years, the World Health Organization has taken the extraordinary step of declaring a global emergency. This time the cause is monkeypox, which has spread in just a few weeks to dozens of countries and infected tens of thousands of people. Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the W.H.O.’s director general, on Saturday overruled a panel of advisers, who could not come to a consensus, and declared a “public health emergency of…

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America was in an early-death crisis long before Covid

America was in an early-death crisis long before Covid

Ed Yong writes: Jacob Bor has been thinking about a parallel universe. He envisions a world in which America has health on par with that of other wealthy nations, and is not an embarrassing outlier that, despite spending more on health care than any other country, has shorter life spans, higher rates of chronic disease and maternal mortality, and fewer doctors per capita than its peers. Bor, an epidemiologist at Boston University School of Public Health, imagines the people who…

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The economic shock from the pandemic continues to assault global fortunes

The economic shock from the pandemic continues to assault global fortunes

The New York Times reports: This past week brought home the magnitude of the overlapping crises assailing the global economy, intensifying fears of recession, job losses, hunger and a plunge on stock markets. At the root of this torment is a force so elemental that it has almost ceased to warrant mention — the pandemic. That force is far from spent, confronting policymakers with grave uncertainty. Their policy tools are better suited for more typical downturns, not a rare combination…

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