Affordable Care Act
Report: After years of cuts and even more proposed, public health faces funding crisis
Public health is in trouble.
Most news on the dangers of antibiotic-resistant infections focus on adults. But children are very much at risk too. In fact, a recent study found that U.S. children have experienced a 700 percent surge in infections caused by particular bacteria that’s both resistant to multiple antibiotics and responsible for growing numbers of serious bacterial infections in kids.
The anti-vaxxers were out again this week, spreading misinformation and debunked science about an intervention that’s saved millions of lives and prevented immeasurable human suffering. It’s unconscionable.
Because taking health insurance away from millions of Americans isn’t bad enough, President-elect Trump has reportedly asked an outspoken critic of vaccines — a man who supported the thoroughly debunked notion that vaccines are linked to autism — to lead a commission on vaccine safety.
Government
Disease outbreak guarantees: A proposal to build public health capacity in developing nations (rerun)
While The Pump Handle is on holiday break, we are republishing some of our favorite posts from the past year. This one is from July 2016: In 2005, the World Health Assembly adopted a revised version of its International Health Regulations, a legally binding treaty among 196 nations to boost global health security and strengthen the world’s capacity to confront serious disease threats such as Ebola and SARS. A decade later, just one-third of countries have the ability to respond to a public health emergency. That’s why Rebecca Katz thinks it’s time to get creative.
Infectious Diseases & Vaccines
“Nightmare bacteria” with quick-spreading capabilities found on US pig farm
Last week, the journal Antibiotic Agents and Chemotherapy posted an accepted manuscript that contains some very bad news: an easy-to-spread gene that makes bacteria resistant to an important class of antibiotics has been found in 2015 samples from a US pig farm.
Infectious Diseases & Vaccines
CDC: U.S. life expectancy declines, death rates up for heart disease, diabetes, unintentional injury
For the first time in more than two decades, U.S. life expectancy has dropped.
Infectious Diseases & Vaccines
Haiti sees surge in cholera cases after Hurricane Matthew; UN admits moral responsibility
Months after a severe earthquake devastated Haiti in 2010, UN peacekeeping troops exacerbated Haitians’ suffering by introducing cholera to the island. After Hurricane Matthew, cholera cases are surging again, and the UN admits it has a moral responsibility to address the situation.
Hispanic hotel workers in Las Vegas are becoming a powerful political force; families of miners who died from black lung disease sue Johns Hopkins Hospital; Milwaukee officials approve a living wage ordinance for county workers; and women in France and Iceland walk off the job to protest the gender wage gap.
In troubling public health news, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported just yesterday that combined cases of gonorrhea, syphilis and chlamydia in the U.S. have climbed to the highest number on record.