Tag Archives: Outbreak

Trump plans ‘major briefing’ on opioid crisis

Paramedics display a dose of the opioid overdose reversal drug Narcan, or Naloxone Hydrochloride, in an ambulance in Peabody, Massachusetts, U.S., August 8, 2017. REUTERS/Brian Snyder

By James Oliphant

BRIDGEWATER, N.J. (Reuters) – President Donald Trump has scheduled what he called a “major briefing” for Tuesday on the epidemic of opioid drug use in the United States, a health crisis that kills more than 100 Americans daily.

In the midst of a two-week getaway at his golf club in New Jersey, Trump will meet with Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price to discuss the matter. Trump frequently mentioned the opioid crisis as a presidential candidate, but has given it less public attention since taking office in January.

A commission created by Trump to study the matter urged him last week to declare a national emergency to address what it called a crisis involving the epidemic use of opioids, framing its death toll in the context of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States.

The commission, headed by Republican New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, recommended a series of steps Trump could take on his own without Congress. It called for waiving a federal rule that restricts the number of people who can receive residential addiction treatment under the Medicaid healthcare program for the poor and disabled.

According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, opioids were involved in more than 33,000 U.S. deaths in 2015, the latest year for which data is available, and estimates show the death rate has continued rising. Price has called the epidemic one of his agency’s top priorities.

The commission cited government data showing that since 1999 U.S. opioid overdoses have quadrupled, adding that nearly two thirds of U.S. drug overdoses were linked to opioids such as heroin and the powerful painkillers Percocet, OxyContin and fentanyl.

“With approximately 142 Americans dying every day, America is enduring a death toll equal to Sept. 11 every three weeks,” commission members wrote in a report. “Your declaration would empower your cabinet to take bold steps and would force Congress to focus on funding and empowering the executive branch even further to deal with this loss of life.”

So far, the White House has given no indication Trump will adopt the panel’s recommendations.

The Republican president’s initial federal budget called for a 2 percent increase in drug treatment programs and would provide funds to increase border security to stop the flow of drugs into the country.

Substance abuse treatment activists have criticized his proposed cuts to federal prevention and research programs as well as his calls to shrink Medicaid, which covers drug treatment for hundreds of thousands of Americans.

Preserving funds to confront the opioid epidemic emerged as a sticking point in congressional efforts to repeal the Affordable Care Act this year.

Republican legislation in the Senate to dismantle the Obamacare healthcare law included $45 billion for fighting the opioid epidemic, on top of the $2 billion in an earlier version of the bill, but the measure was defeated last month.

Trump is away from Washington until later this month while the White House is undergoing renovations. He and his aides have said he is maintaining a daily working schedule. Tuesday’s meeting with Price marks his first public event in days.

“I will be holding a major briefing on the Opioid crisis, a major problem for our country, today at 3:00 P.M. in Bedminster, N.J.,” Trump wrote on Twitter.

Even before the event, the Democratic National Committee slammed Trump, with spokesman Daniel Wessel saying in a statement: “Trump promised he’d come to the aid of communities ravaged by the opioid epidemic, but so far he’s done nothing for them.”

Officials from New Hampshire criticized Trump last week after a leaked transcript of a January conversation with Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto showed that Trump had called the New England state, hard-hit by the opioid epidemic, a “drug-infested den.”

A study published on Monday in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine and led by University of Virginia researchers found that official figures issued by states on deaths caused by opioid and heroin overdoses were substantially under-reported.

The researchers examined death certificates dating from 2008 to 2014 and found that national mortality rates for opioids were 24 percent above previously reported data, and the heroin mortality rate was 22 percent higher.

(Reporting by Doina Chiacu and James Oliphant; Additional reporting by Yasmeen Abutaleb and Susan Cornwell; Editing by Will Dunham)

Dengue outbreak kills 300 in Sri Lanka, hospitals at limit

A mosquito landing on a person. Courtesy of Pixabay

COLOMBO (Reuters) – An outbreak of dengue virus has killed around 300 people so far this year in Sri Lanka and hospitals are stretched to capacity, health officials said on Monday.

They blamed recent monsoon rains and floods that have left pools of stagnant water and rotting rain-soaked trash — ideal breeding sites for mosquitoes that carry the virus.

The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies is scaling up emergency assistance to Sri Lanka with the Sri Lanka Red Cross to help contain the outbreak.

“Dengue patients are streaming into overcrowded hospitals that are stretched beyond capacity and struggling to cope, particularly in the country’s hardest hit western province,” Red Cross/Red Crescent said in a statement.

According to the World Health Organization, dengue is one of the world’s fastest growing diseases, endemic in 100 countries, with as many as 390 million infections annually. Early detection and treatment save lives when infections are severe, particularly for young children.

The Sri Lankan government is struggling to control the virus, which causes flu-like symptoms and can develop into the deadly hemorrhagic dengue fever.

The ministry of health said the number of dengue infections has climbed above 100,000 since the start of 2017, with 296 deaths.

“Ongoing downpours and worsening sanitation conditions raise concerns the disease will continue to spread,” Red Cross/Red Crescent said.

Its assistance comes a week after Australia announced programs to help control dengue fever in Sri Lanka.

“Dengue is endemic here, but one reason for the dramatic rise in cases is that the virus currently spreading has evolved and people lack the immunity to fight off the new strain,” Novil Wijesekara, head of health at the Sri Lanka Red Cross said in a statement.

(Reporting by Ranga Sirilal and Shihar Aneez Editing by Jeremy Gaunt.)

Cholera kills four in Kenyan capital since May, government shuts hotels

Cholera patients receive treatment and care inside a special ward at the Kenyatta National Hospital in Nairobi, Kenya July 19, 2017. REUTERS/Thomas Mukoya

By George Obulutsa

NAIROBI (Reuters) – A cholera outbreak in the Kenyan capital has killed four people since May and the government has shut down a three-star hotel and a popular restaurant there to control its spread, the health minister said on Wednesday.

At least 79 people with confirmed cases of cholera were being treated in various Nairobi hospitals and authorities were setting up 10 more treatment centers to cope with the outbreak, Cleopa Mailu, the minister, told a news conference.

“We have so far closed two hotels … and we shall continue to do so if there is evidence there is risk to the public,” Mailu said, after visiting some of the patients.

The government had ordered the immediate testing of about half a million people in the food handling business in the next 21 days, he said.

Mailu said local authorities in Nairobi would be required to repair all broken sewer lines, ensure all water vendors and their water sources were certified, and ban hawking of food.

“Some of them (measures) will not be pleasant,” he said.

Containing cholera in Nairobi is critical, given it is a major hub, not just in Kenya, but in the region.

Mailu said the Kenya Red Cross and UNICEF were also helping to contain the cholera, a diarrhoeal disease transmitted by infected food and water. It can kill within hours unless treated with intravenous fluids and antibiotics.

Kenya has suffered several waves of cholera since 1971, according to the World Health Organization. An outbreak in March last year killed 216 people with 13,000 hospitalized across the country.

Two ministers, Henry Rotich and Adan Mohamed, sought treatment with cholera-like symptoms after eating food during a government event in the capital last week, local newspapers reported.

Rotich’s ministry of finance said he did not wish to comment. Mohamed, who is industrialization minister, was not available immediately.

(Editing by Duncan Miriri and Richard Balmforth)

U.N. says world needs to know about Yemen, journalists need access

Members of a special security force loyal to the Houthi rebels perform an oath as they take part in a military parade at the Tahrir Square in downtown Sanaa, Yemen July 19, 2017. REUTERS/Khaled Abdullah

By Michelle Nichols

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) – The United Nations on Wednesday demanded media access to report on the “man-made catastrophe” in Yemen after a Saudi Arabia-led coalition blocked three foreign journalists from traveling on a U.N. aid flight to the Houthi rebel-controlled capital Sanaa.

“Steps like this do not help,” U.N. spokesman Farhan Haq told reporters in New York. “This has been a large man-made humanitarian problem, the world needs to know and journalists need to have access.”

The coalition, which intervened in the Yemen conflict in 2015 in support of the internationally recognized government of President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi, controls the airspace over Yemen and can prevent any flights made without prior permission.

The Saudi-led coalition, which is backing Yemen government forces fighting the Iran-allied Houthi rebels, prevented the U.N. flight from departing Djibouti on Tuesday because the journalists were due to travel.

Haq said the U.N. humanitarian air service had been allowed to take off on Wednesday and had landed in Sanaa carrying 26 humanitarian aid workers, but not the three journalists from the British Broadcasting Corporation.

“This partially explains why Yemen, which is one of the world’s largest humanitarian crises, is not getting enough attention in international media,” Haq said.

“The lack of coverage is hindering humanitarian workers efforts to draw the attention of the international community and donors to the man-made catastrophe that the country is experiencing,” he said.

Top United Nations officials last week slammed the warring parties in Yemen and their international allies for fueling an unprecedented deadly cholera outbreak, driving millions closer to famine and hindering humanitarian aid access.

Since the end of April, the World Health Organization said there have been more than 320,000 suspected cases of cholera – a disease that causes uncontrollable diarrhea – and 1,742 deaths across more than 90 percent of the Arabian Peninsula country.

Haq said the journalists had been carrying visas from the Yemen government.

A source in the coalition said that the Yemeni government was the only party entitled to issue visas for foreigners and that entry must be made via commercial flights through Aden airport, which is under its control.

(Reporting by Michelle Nichols; Editing by Diane Craft)

Outbreak of hantavirus infections kills three in Washington state

A micrographic study of liver tissue seen from a Hantavirus pulmonary syndrome (HPS) patient seen in this undated photo obtained by Reuters, July 6, 2017. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention/Handout via REUTERS

By Laura Zuckerman

(Reuters) – Five people have been stricken with the rare, rodent-borne hantavirus illness in Washington state since February, three of whom have died, in the state’s worst outbreak of the disease in at least 18 years, public health officials reported on Thursday.

The three fatal cases also mark the highest death toll from hantavirus pulmonary syndrome in Washington state during a single year since the respiratory ailment was first identified in the “Four Corners” region of the U.S. Southwest in 1993.

The disease has been found to be transmitted to humans from deer mice, either through contact with urine, droppings, saliva or nesting materials of infected rodents or by inhaling dust contaminated with the virus.

Victims in the latest outbreak were men and women ranging in age from their 20s to their 50s from four counties across the state, said David Johnson, spokesman for the Washington State Department of Health.

The first diagnosed case this year was in February and the most recent was last month, when the infection killed a resident of Spokane County in the eastern part of the state near Washington’s border with Idaho. Three of the five cases, including another one that proved fatal, were confirmed in the Puget Sound region of King and Skagit counties.

The only common factor among those infected by the disease, which typically kills more than a third of its victims, is that they were all exposed to infected mice, Johnson said.

The last time five confirmed hantavirus cases were diagnosed in Washington state in a single year was in 1999, although just one of those proved fatal, Johnson said.

Washington has reported 49 of the 690 hantavirus cases tallied nationwide from 1993 to January 2016, ranking fifth among 10 Western states that account for the bulk of all documented infections, according to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta.

Eighteen infections with four deaths were reported nationally in 2015. The year before, the CDC counted 35 cases, of which 14 were fatal.

The most highly publicized hantavirus outbreak occurred in 2012, when 10 visitors to Yosemite National Park in California were diagnosed with the infection, three of whom died, prompting a worldwide alert. All but one of those were linked to tent cabins later found to have been infested by deer mice.

(Editing by Steve Gorman; Editing by Paul Tait)

Yemen’s cholera death toll rises to 1,500: WHO

FILE PHOTO: Women sit with relatives infected with cholera at a hospital in the Red Sea port city of Hodeidah, Yemen May 14, 2017. REUTERS/Abduljabbar Zeyad

ADEN (Reuters) – The death toll from a major cholera outbreak in Yemen has risen to 1,500, Nevio Zagaria, the World Health Organization’s (WHO) representative in Yemen, said on Saturday, and appealed for more help to put an end to the epidemic.

Yemen has been devastated by a 27-month war between a Saudi-led coalition and the armed Iran-aligned Houthi group, making it a breeding ground for the disease, which spreads by faeces getting into food or water and thrives in places with poor sanitation.

Speaking at a joint news conference with representatives of the United Nations Children Fund (UNICEF) and the World Bank, Zagaria said that had been some 246,000 suspected cases in the period to June 30.

The WHO said this week that the outbreak had reached the halfway mark at 218,798 cases as a massive emergency response has begun to curb its spread two months into the epidemic.

Although most of Yemen’s health infrastructure has broken down and health workers have not been paid for more than six months, the WHO is paying “incentives” to doctors, nurses, cleaners and paramedics to staff an emergency cholera network.

With funding help from the World Bank, the WHO is setting up treatment centers with 50-60 beds each, overseen by shifts of about 14 staff working around the clock. The aim is to reach 5,000 beds in total.

(Reporting by Mohammed Mukhashaf, writing by Sami Aboudi; editing by Jason Neely)

Six Michigan officials criminally charged in Flint water crisis

FILE PHOTO - The Flint Water Plant tower is seen in Flint, Michigan, U.S. on February 7, 2016. REUTERS/Rebecca Cook/File Photo

By Timothy Mclaughlin

(Reuters) – Six current and former Michigan and Flint officials were criminally charged on Wednesday for their roles in the city’s water crisis that was linked to an outbreak of Legionnaires’ disease that caused at least 12 deaths, the state’s attorney general said.

Five of the officials, including Michigan Health and Human Services Director Nick Lyon, were charged with involuntary manslaughter stemming from their roles in handling the crisis, Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette said in a statement.

Involuntary manslaughter is a felony that carries a sentence of up to 15 years in prison.

Lyon, 49, was also charged with one count of misconduct in office. The felony charge carries a sentence of up to five years in prison.

Four current and former state and Flint officials were also charged with involuntary manslaughter. The four had all been previously charged with lesser crimes in connection with the water crisis.

The state’s chief medical executive, Eden Wells, was charged Wednesday with obstruction of justice and lying to police.

Michigan Governor Rick Snyder said in a statement that Lyon and Wells have his “full faith and confidence” and would remain on duty and help in Flint’s recovery.

An attorney for Lyon could not be reached for comment. It was not immediately known if Wells had an attorney.

Schuette said his team had not spoken with Snyder as part of the investigation.

“We attempted to interview the governor. We were not successful,” Schuette said. He declined to elaborate.

Previously, Schuette, when asked if Snyder was a target in the investigation, said there were no targets but “nobody is off the table.”

Some critics have called for high-ranking state officials, including Snyder, to be charged. Snyder previously said he believed he had not done anything criminally wrong.

“The governor isn’t going to speculate on where the investigation is or is not headed, but he continues to cooperate fully,” Snyder’s spokeswoman Anna Heaton said.

Snyder’s attorney, Brian Lennon, said in a statement that Snyder was made available to testify under oath this spring after being told a subpoena would be produced, but that never occurred. He added that Snyder previously testified under oath to Congress.

Wednesday’s charges stem from more than 80 cases of Legionnaires’ disease, including the fatalities, that were believed to be linked to the water in Flint after the city switched its source to the Flint River from Lake Huron in April 2014.

Lyon was aware of the Legionnaires’ outbreak in Genesee County at least one year before he informed the public, according to court documents. His deliberate failure to inform the public resulted in the death of Genesee Township resident Robert Skidmore, 85, from Legionnaires’ in December 2015, the documents said.

Wells lied to police about when she became aware of the outbreak, according to the documents. She also threatened a team of independent researchers who were studying the source of the disease, court documents said.

“It’s good to see that state Attorney General Schuette and his team are taking this matter seriously,” Flint Mayor Karen Weaver said in a statement. “We all are waiting to see what else the investigation uncovers.”

The crisis in Flint erupted in 2015 when tests found high amounts of lead in blood samples taken from children in the predominantly black city of about 100,000.

The more corrosive river water caused lead to leach from pipes and into the drinking water. Lead levels in Flint’s drinking water have now fallen below levels considered dangerous by federal regulators, state officials said last January.

Others charged with involuntary manslaughter on Wednesday included former state-appointed emergency manager Darnell Earley, former Flint city employee Howard Croft, and former state Department of Environmental Quality officials Stephen Busch and Liane Shekter-Smith.

(Reporting by Timothy Mclaughlin in Chicago; Editing by Diane Craft and Matthew Lewis)

Jury quirk in U.S. meningitis outbreak case could bring stiffer sentence

FILE PHOTO: Barry Cadden, the former president of New England Compounding Center, exits the federal courthouse in Boston, Massachusetts, U.S., March 22, 2017. REUTERS/Nate Raymond/File Photo

By Nate Raymond

BOSTON (Reuters) – Prosecutors on Monday said a quirk in the trial verdict of a Massachusetts pharmacist cleared of murder for selling fungus-ridden steroids that killed 64 people in 2012 meant that a judge could still consider the murder allegations at his sentencing.

A federal jury in March found Barry Cadden, the co-founder and ex-president of New England Compounding Center, guilty on racketeering and fraud counts but cleared him of the most serious charges, second-degree murder, for his role in a meningitis outbreak that sickened 753 people in 20 states, killing 64.

But when the 12 jurors filled out their verdict slip, rather than just checking findings of “guilty” or “not guilty,” they filled in numbers that prosecutors now say reflected vote counts showing a majority found Cadden guilty on 21 of 25 murder counts.

The U.S. Attorney’s office in Massachusetts argued in a motion filed on Monday that the verdict form showed jurors believed Cadden was guilty of murder and want the judge to consider that fact in determining his sentence on June 26.

Former prosecutors said they had never seen a verdict slip quite like it.

“While they failed to reach unanimity on these racketeering acts, the jury’s verdict confirmed that the murder racketeering acts were proven by a preponderance of the evidence in this case, and can be properly considered at sentencing,” prosecutors wrote in the filing.

Their argument might work since judges at sentencing can consider conduct proven by a standard lower than what jurors are instructed to follow to convict someone, said David Schumacher, former deputy chief of the health care fraud unit of the U.S. Attorney’s office.

“They have a very good argument,” he said. “They actually have documentary evidence prosecutors never have in criminal cases.”

A conviction on any of the 25 acts of second-degree murder Cadden faced under a racketeering law could have exposed him to life in prison. He could still face decades behind bars.

A lawyer for Cadden did not respond to a request for comment. In court papers, his lawyers have disputed that the jury did not clearly acquit him and said prosecution claims to the contrary were “wishful thinking.”

Cadden, 50, was one of only two out of 14 people indicted in 2014 connected to the scandal at the Framingham, Massachusetts-based New England Compounding Center to face murder charges. The other murder defendant, former supervisory pharmacist Glenn Chin, is scheduled go on trial on Sept. 19. He has pleaded not guilty.

Prosecutors said that in 2012, the compounding pharmacy sent out 17,600 vials of steroids labeled sterile that were contaminated with mold to 23 states and that Cadden ignored the rules and put profits before patients. Cadden denied wrongdoing.

(Adds missing word “care” to 7th paragraph.)

(Reporting by Nate Raymond; editing by Scott Malone and Tom Brown)

Polio outbreak in Syria poses vaccination dilemma for WHO

A health worker administers polio vaccination to a child in Raqqa, eastern Syria November 18, 2013. REUTERS/Nour Fourat

GENEVA (Reuters) – Vaccinating too few children in Syria against polio because the six-year-old war there makes it difficult to reach them risks causing more cases in the future, the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Friday, posing a dilemma after a recent outbreak.

Two children have been paralyzed in the last few months in Islamic State-held Deir al-Zor in the first polio cases in Syria since 2014 and in the same eastern province bordering Iraq where a different strain caused 36 cases in 2013-2014.

Vaccinating even 50 percent of the estimated 90,000 children aged under 5 in the Mayadin area of Deir al-Zor would probably not be enough to stop the outbreak and might actually sow the seeds for the next outbreak, WHO’s Oliver Rosenbauer said.

Immunisation rates need to be closer to 80 percent to have maximum effect and protect a population, he told a briefing.

“Are we concerned that we’re in fact going to be seeding further future polio vaccine-derived outbreaks? … Absolutely, that is a concern. And that is why this vaccine must be used judiciously and to try to ensure the highest level of coverage,” Rosenbauer said.

“This is kind of what has become known as the OPV, the oral polio vaccine paradox,” he said.

The new cases are a vaccine-derived poliovirus type 2, a rare type which can emerge in under-immunised communities after mutating from strains contained in the oral polio vaccine.

“Such vaccine-derived strains tend to be less dangerous than wild polio virus strains, they tend to cause less cases, they tend not to travel so easily geographically. That’s all kind of the silver lining and should play in our favor operationally,” he said.

All polio strains can paralyze within hours.

Syria is one of the last remaining pockets of the virus worldwide. The virus remains endemic in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

(Reporting by Stephanie Nebehay; Editing by Louise Ireland)

Puerto Rico declares Zika outbreak over, CDC maintains travel warning

Aedes aegypti mosquitoes are seen at the Laboratory of Entomology and Ecology of the Dengue Branch of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in San Juan, Puerto Rico, March 6, 2016. REUTERS/Alvin Baez/File Photo

By Julie Steenhuysen

(Reuters) – Puerto Rico on Monday declared that the 2016 Zika epidemic is over, saying transmission of the virus that can cause birth defects when pregnant women are exposed has fallen significantly.

About 10 cases of the mosquito-borne disease have been reported in each four-week period since April 2017, down from more than 8,000 cases reported in a four-week period at the peak of the epidemic in August 2016, the Puerto Rico Health Department said in a statement.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, however, has not changed its travel advice, noting that pregnant women should not travel to Puerto Rico.

The CDC said its travel notice for Puerto Rico remains in place and that it expects the virus will continue to “circulate indefinitely” in most regions where it has been introduced.

The Department of Health and Human Services declaration of a public health emergency in Puerto Rico relating to pregnant women and children born to women with the virus remains in effect, the CDC said in an emailed statement on Tuesday.

On its website, the CDC cites public health reports saying that “mosquitoes in Puerto Rico are infected with Zika virus and are spreading it to people.”

CDC acting Director Dr. Anne Schuchat said in a statement that she is “pleased that the peak of the Zika outbreak in Puerto Rico has come to a close.” However, she said, “We cannot let our guard down.”

Schuchat said CDC will continue to focus on protecting pregnant women and work closely with the Puerto Rican health department to support Zika surveillance and prevention efforts on the island, which is a U.S. territory.

A major outbreak of Zika began in Brazil in 2015 and spread rapidly to dozens of countries. There is no treatment for Zika, but private companies and governments are working on a vaccine.

In addition to Puerto Rico, the CDC has warned of a risk of Zika infection for travelers going to Mexico, Cuba, most of the Caribbean and South America, as well as parts of Africa and Southeast Asia. http://bit.ly/2m50Lf7

Locally transmitted Zika cases have also been reported in Texas and Florida.

(Reporting by Julie Steenhuysen in Chicago; Editing by Lisa Shumaker and Jonathan Oatis)