Latest Health News

WEDNESDAY, Dec. 22, 2021 (HealthDay News) -- Summer can sizzle in the city, but a new report finds urban living is getting hotter than ever before.The research shows that city dwellers may be suffering from what scientists call an urban "heat penalty" -- an extra two to six hours a day of uncomfortably hot summer temperatures.And most of those sweltering hours occur at night because cities soak in heat during the day and release it at night. It's known as the urban heat island effect.“People have known about the urban heat island effect for more than 180 years, but the fact that the differences between nighttime and daytime and among different cities is so substantial is somewhat surprising,” said Yun Qian, an atmospheric scientist at the Department of Energy's Pacific Northwest...

WEDNESDAY, Dec. 22, 2021 (HealthDay News) -- A new program to boost the supply of cancer medicines for children in low- and middle-income countries has been announced by the World Health Organization (WHO) and St. Jude Children's Research Hospital.The hospital is making a six-year, $200 million investment to launch the Global Platform for Access to Childhood Cancer Medicines, which will provide medicines at no cost to participating countries in the pilot phase. This is the largest financial commitment for a global effort in childhood cancer medicines to date, according to the hospital."Close to nine in 10 children with cancer live in low- and middle-income countries," WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said in a hospital news release. "Survival in these countries is less...

WEDNESDAY, Dec. 22, 2021 (HealthDay News) - - COVID-19 is now the third leading cause of death for Americans and has shortened life expectancy by nearly two years, a drop not seen since World War II, a new government report shows. Life expectancy dropped from 78.8 in 2010 to 77 in 2020 as the age-adjusted death rate increased 17%, going from 715 deaths per 100,000 people in 2019 to 835 deaths per 100,000 in 2020, researchers from the U.S Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found."We haven't seen a decline like this since 1943," said Robert Anderson, chief of mortality statistics at CDC's National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS)."Normally, we don't see fluctuations of more than two or three tenths in a year. So, any sort of change of this magnitude is really quite unusual....

TUESDAY, Dec. 21, 2021 (HealthDay News) -- President Joe Biden laid out a comprehensive plan on Tuesday to help Americans navigate a tough winter facing the Omicron variant, but he also made an impassioned plea for every eligible person to get vaccines and boosters."For the folks who aren't vaccinated, you may think you're putting only yourself at risk, but your choice is not just a choice about you," Biden said during a speech from the White House. "It affects other people -- you're putting other people at risk, your loved ones, your friends, neighbors, strangers you run into. And your choice can be the difference between life or death. The longer the virus is around, the more likely variants form that may be deadlier than the ones that have come before. Let me say again and again and...