Архив рубрики: Здоровье Америка

NEW YORK — U.S. public health officials have been told to stop working with the World Health Organization, effective immediately.

A U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention official, John Nkengasong, sent a memo to senior leaders at the agency on Sunday night telling them that all staff who work with the WHO must immediately stop their collaborations and “await further guidance.”

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Experts said the sudden stoppage was a surprise and would set back work on investigating and trying to stop outbreaks of Marburg virus and mpox in Africa, as well as brewing global threats. It also comes as health authorities around the world are monitoring bird flu outbreaks among U.S. livestock.

The Associated Press viewed a copy of Nkengasong’s memo, which said the stop-work policy applied to “all CDC staff engaging with WHO through technical working groups, coordinating centers, advisory boards, cooperative agreements or other means—in person or virtual.” It also..

Since COVID-19 first took off, political leaders, infectious disease specialists, and the lay public have debated its origins. Eventually, two hypotheses emerged: Either the virus crossed over from animals to humans in a wet market in Wuhan—the city in which the disease first appeared—or it leaked from a Chinese lab, likely the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

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The truth is still unknown. But on Jan. 25, 2025, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) weighed in, saying in a statement to reporters that the virus is “more likely” to have come from a lab than a natural reservoir like a bat or other animal at the wet market. The conclusion did not come from new evidence—merely a fresh look at existing data—and the agency has “low confidence” in the findings, suggesting the analysis is based on incomplete data. Accordingly, the CIA said it would “continue to evaluate any available credible new intelligence reporting or open source information that could change CIA..

One of the many indignities of being a patient is that you won’t always be taken seriously. Perhaps the most frustrating—and startlingly common—experience is being told your medical symptoms, which have nothing to do with mental health, are anxiety.

Steph Fowler can tick off a long list of conditions she was initially told were anxiety or otherwise all in her head: endometriosis, a stomach infection from H.pylori, insomnia, and mast cell activation syndrome. She was sent for a full neuropsychiatric evaluation before her doctors eventually diagnosed her with Long COVID. Figuring out what was really going on “is such a mixed bag,” she says. “It’s a combination of relief that somebody knows I’m not making it up, and that I can trust myself. Anger and frustration also come in, plus the grief of knowing it could have been different.”

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Fowler, 43, a therapist in Chicago, has now shifted her practice to supporting clients who live with chronic and misunderst..

When Vanessa Walilko was in her late 20s, she got strep throat—and then she got it again and again. Because she’s allergic to strep bacteria, she says her illness turned into scarlet fever several times within a few months. Soon, she started having heart issues. After spending a day in the sun selling jewelry at an art fair, she nearly passed out. A friend rushed her to the emergency room, where a doctor asked if she had a family history of people dropping dead in their 20s. When Walilko said no, the doctor told her to learn to better manage her stress and sent her home.

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“I don’t know if I can convey how smug and flippant he was,” recalls Walilko, 41, who lives in Evanston, Ill. “It was unreal—I was so glad my friend was there with me, because I was pretty delirious. I had to check with her: ‘Did I catch all that?’”

Walilko knew something was wrong—yet says clinicians continued to brush off her symptoms. After doing internet research, she figured out..

Everything is negotiable, as the saying goes—and that includes medical bills. Although many people assume their health care bills are binding, there’s often more wiggle room than one would think.

“Never pay any bill right away,” says Caitlin Donovan, a senior director at Patient Advocate Foundation (PAF), a nonprofit that helps patients afford medical care. Prices that are incorrect, unaffordable, or simply higher than you think are fair can often be changed with a little effort. A recent report by the Commonwealth Fund, a health care research organization, found that about 40% of people who challenged an unforeseen medical bill ultimately secured a price reduction or even had their balance forgiven entirely.

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Erin Duffy, a research scientist at the University of Southern California’s Leonard D. Schaeffer Center for Health Policy and Economics, found an even higher percentage when she surveyed a small group of U.S. consumers who received medical bil..

With respiratory-disease season in full swing and a bird flu outbreak rapidly evolving, the new Trump Administration has ordered federal health agencies to secure White House approval before communicating with the public.

“As the new Administration considers its plan for managing the federal policy and public communications processes, it is important that the President’s appointees and designees have the opportunity to review and approve any regulations, guidance documents, and other public documents and communications (including social media),” through Feb. 1, reads a Jan. 21 memo sent by Department of Health and Human Services officials and reviewed by TIME.

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The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and the National Institutes of Health (NIH) are all housed within HHS. These agencies regularly publish reports, research, and guidance that shape public response to both chronic and acute health threa..

On his first day in office, President Donald Trump signed an executive order withdrawing the U.S. from the World Health Organization (WHO)—a move that experts say makes the U.S. and other countries less safe from infectious diseases and other public-health threats.

“For Americans it may not be obvious immediately what the impact will be, but given the world we live in and all of the factors that are driving more disease outbreaks, America cannot fight them alone,” says Dr. Ashish Jha, dean of the school of public health at Brown University and former White House COVID-19 Response Coordinator. “We need an effective WHO to not just keep the world safe from these diseases, but to keep Americans safe from these diseases.”

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“The bottom line is that withdrawing from the WHO makes Americans and the world less safe,” says Dr. Tom Frieden, president and CEO of the nonprofit health organization Resolve to Save Lives and former director of the U.S. Centers for ..

On his first day in office, President Donald Trump signed an executive order withdrawing the U.S. from the World Health Organization (WHO)—a move that experts say makes the U.S. and other countries less safe from infectious diseases and other public-health threats.

“For Americans it may not be obvious immediately what the impact will be, but given the world we live in and all of the factors that are driving more disease outbreaks, America cannot fight them alone,” says Dr. Ashish Jha, dean of the school of public health at Brown University and former White House COVID-19 Response Coordinator. “We need an effective WHO to not just keep the world safe from these diseases, but to keep Americans safe from these diseases.”

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“The bottom line is that withdrawing from the WHO makes Americans and the world less safe,” says Dr. Tom Frieden, president and CEO of the nonprofit health organization Resolve to Save Lives and former director of the U.S. Centers for ..

Firefighters are making progress on containing the wildfires that have been raging for weeks in Southern California. But even once the physical threat of the fires diminishes, the mental-health toll will linger for months and even years, experts say. With thousands of people evacuated and homes destroyed, rebuilding people’s social and psychological resources is one of the next pressing challenges.

Mental-health crisis centers are already seeing a surge in wildfire-related calls from the Los Angeles area. Here’s what experts say survivors can expect as they process their experiences, and the resources available to them.

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“A real intense sense of uncertainty”

The national mental-health help line, 988, says they saw a five-fold increase in the number of calls from the Los Angeles region from Jan. 7, when the fires began, to Jan. 15. “We did a brief analysis of what people are talking about, and the predominant emotions people are experiencing are fear..

As a recent college graduate in a new city, Samantha Elliott thought she’d be lonely. Instead, she found companionship in the most unexpected place: with herself. And that, ironically, helped expand her community.

“Being alone has this negative connotation, like it’s a punishment, but you’re learning to be friends with yourself,” says Elliott, who’s 24. Over the past few years, she’s gone on solo hikes and to concerts, museums, movies, and dinners alone—often meeting other people in the process. “It’s like I have this little secret with myself—this experience that was just for me,” she says. “Nobody knows it was a really lovely, profound time.”

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Spending time going places and doing things alone can be transformative, says Jessica Gaddy, a therapist in Los Angeles and avid solo traveler. She encourages many of her clients to become more comfortable with solitude as a means of self-care and self-exploration, and she helps them overcome their fears aroun..