Latest Health News

TUESDAY, Oct. 12, 2021 (American Heart Association News) -- A medical school lecture taught Dr. Samuel Kung a vital lesson: He needed to see a cardiologist.As a toddler, Kung had Kawasaki disease, an illness of unknown cause that tends to strike young children. He doesn't remember being sick, just the years of follow-up that stretched into his teen years.And the handoff from his pediatric doctors to adult experts was virtually non-existent, he said. "The emphasis was never placed on just how important it was for me to follow up with someone."That could have had life-threatening consequences for Kung, who is now a resident in internal medicine at Scripps Clinic and Scripps Green Hospital in La Jolla, California. He's also co-author of a new scientific statement from the American Heart...

TUESDAY, Oct. 12, 2021 (American Heart Association News) -- The pandemic has highlighted societal inequities that leave historically disenfranchised communities more at risk for COVID-19 exposure. But recent studies suggest the disparities more severely impact Hispanic people who only speak Spanish, especially when it comes to unemployment and food insecurity."This is about structural racism and structural inequities," said Dr. Fatima Rodriguez, a cardiologist and assistant professor of cardiovascular medicine at Stanford University School of Medicine in California. "It has to do with the kind of jobs people do, the kind of communities people live in."Often the whole family, many generations, live together. It makes it very hard to isolate if you test positive. Whether it's food...

TUESDAY, Oct. 12, 2021 (HealthDay News) -- Merck & Co. announced Monday that it had submitted an application with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for emergency use approval of the first antiviral pill targeted to COVID-19.Experts say authorization of molnupiravir, at this time only for use inhigh-risk Americans, could be a major advance in the struggle against COVID-19 because a convenient, more affordable treatment could reach many more high-risk patients than the more complicated monoclonal antibody treatments now used, according to The New York Times."The extraordinary impact of this pandemic demands that we move with unprecedented urgency, and that is what our teams have done by submitting this application for molnupiravir to the FDA within 10 days of receiving the data,"...

TUESDAY, Oct. 12, 2021 (HealthDay News) -- Climate change is the "single biggest health threat facing humanity," and governments must "act with urgency" to tackle the crisis, a World Health Organization (WHO) special report warns.In advance of a United Nation's climate change summit in early November, groups representing 45 million nurses, doctors and health professionals worldwide signed an open letter urging action on the climate crisis, CNN reported.Both the WHO report and the open letter outline major climate issues already affecting public health. They include: air pollution from the burning of fossil fuels that causes climate change; more intense heat waves, floods and storms; extreme weather worsening food insecurity and hunger; and rising sea levels wrecking homes and...