WASHINGTON — The Trump administration has fired the two leaders of an influential health group that determines when insurance must provide free preventive care, like mammograms and colonoscopies, for millions of Americans. In letters dated May 11, Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. notified the two doctors who chaired the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force…
Africa’s top public health body has confirmed a new Ebola outbreak in Congo’s Ituri province. A total of 246 suspected cases and 65 deaths have already been recorded in the new outbreak, the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention said in a statement on Friday. Here’s what to know about the health crisis: The…
NEW YORK — About 70,000 Americans died of drug overdoses last year — about 14% fewer than the previous year, according to preliminary government data. It was the third straight annual drop, making it the longest decline in decades, according to federal data released Wednesday. The 2025 total is about the same as the tally…
WASHINGTON — Scientists are tweaking a powerful cancer therapy in hopes it could fight HIV instead, by supercharging patients’ own immune cells. On Tuesday, researchers said a single dose of those revved-up cells strongly suppressed HIV in two people — one for nearly a year and the other for nearly two years — without requiring…
NEW ORLEANS — A federal appeals court has restricted access to one of the most common means of abortion in the U.S. by blocking mailing of prescriptions of mifepristone. A panel of the New Orleans-based 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals is requiring that the abortion pill be distributed only in-person at clinics. “Every abortion…
NEW YORK — The Trump administration is appealing a judge’s order as it tries to cut the number of vaccines recommended for every child in the United States. The appeal filed Wednesday was a delayed response to a March 16 court order that blocked the decision by President Donald Trump’s health secretary, Robert F. Kennedy…
At least 34 people in 13 states have been sickened with salmonella poisoning traced to contact with backyard poultry, including some with infections resistant to common antibiotics, federal health officials said. Backyard poultry include birds like chicken, ducks, geese, guinea fowl and turkeys. The animals can carry germs, including salmonella, that make people sick. Illnesses…
HARARE, Zimbabwe — HARARE, Zimbabwe (AP) — Vaccination programs across Africa have saved tens of millions of lives over the past two decades, but progress is slowing in some countries, the World Health Organization said Wednesday, amid warnings that cuts to United States aid risk leaving millions of children unprotected. Health systems in the continent…
DHAKA, Bangladesh — Bangladesh is conducting emergency measles-rubella vaccinations while trying to contain an ongoing outbreak that has killed more than 100 children in less than a month. The government in partnership with the World Health Organization, the U.N. children’s agency and the Gavi vaccine alliance began working to vaccinate children age 6 months to…
People who distribute, or intend to distribute, abortion-inducing medication in Mississippi could face a criminal charge and up to 10 years in prison if convicted, under a bill lawmakers are sending to Republican Gov. Tate Reeves. Experts say criminalization could lock up desperate Mississippians and scare doctors away from prescribing these medications in clinical settings…
