While much of the country is focused on the spiraling measles outbreak concentrated in the small, dusty towns of West Texas, cases of pertussis have skyrocketed by more than 1,500% nationwide since hitting a recent low in 2021 amid the COVID-19 pandemic. Deaths tied to the disease are also up, hitting 10 last year, compared with about two to four in previous years. Cases are on track to exceed that total this year.
In the U.S., thousands of donated organs never reach the patients who need them. CBS News found that last year, one in three kidneys recovered from deceased donors were never transplanted. Specialized organ recovery teams made more than 26 million attempts to place these kidneys with transplant centers, offering them again and again in search of a suitable match--before they were ultimately discarded as medical waste. And it's not just kidneys. Nearly 12,000 potentially life-saving organs were discarded last year in the United States.
Around 250 doctors at Hennepin County Medical Center have been certified as the first unionized resident and fellow physicians in Minnesota, according to union officials. The physicians are represented by the Committee of Interns and Residents, a local of the Service Employees International Union, who said the Minnesota Bureau of Mediation Services made the certification on April 3.
A new, error-corrected method for detecting cancer from blood samples is much more sensitive and accurate than prior methods and may be useful for monitoring disease status in patients following treatment, according to a study by Weill Cornell Medicine and New York Genome Center investigators. The method, based on whole-genome sequencing of DNA, also represents an important step toward the goal of routine blood test-based screening for early cancer detection.
The CDC in its latest weekly update reported 105 more measles cases, pushing the national total to 712, which is more than double the cases reported for all of 2024. Seven outbreaks have been reported across the country, and 93% of the cases reported so far are part of outbreaks. Infections have been reported from 25 jurisdictions, 3 more than last week. Among the sick patients, 97% were unvaccinated or had unknown vaccination status.
Northern Light official says most of Inland primary care patients will be able to stay with their provider as the company moves closer to closing its Waterville hospital in June.