Health

Cases of dengue fever, a mosquito-borne viral illness that can be fatal, are surging around the world. The increase is occurring both in places that have long struggled with the disease and in areas where its spread was unheard-of until the last year or two, including France, Italy and Chad, in central Africa. Last week, health officials in Pasadena, Calif., reported a first case of locally transmitted dengue.What is dengue fever and why is it becoming more widespread?Dengue, a viral fever, is transmitted by Aedes species of mosquitoes. It can cause excruciating joint pain; is also known by the grim…

Why It Matters: Covid is still dangerous to some Americans.More than 1,200 people are dying of Covid each week, according to C.D.C. data. “That’s a travesty,” said Dr. David Kimberlin, a pediatrician at the University of Alabama at Birmingham who represented the American Academy of Pediatrics at the meeting.“It’s like an entire neighborhood being wiped out every single week,” Dr. Kimberlin added.About 16,000 people were hospitalized with Covid in the week ending Oct. 14, compared with nearly 23,000 at the same time last year and more than 44,000 in 2021.Covid hospitalizations among adults aged 75 and older are two to…

Dr. Apoena Ribeiro is a pediatric dentist and microbiologist at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She’s also a parent.When her daughter was little and growing up in Brazil, Dr. Ribeiro encouraged her to enjoy a holiday called the Feast of Saints Cosmas and Damian, which involves children collecting large bags of candy. But she also had some strategies for keeping the dental dangers at bay.Here’s what she did back then, and still does today, to protect her family’s oral health on a candy-laden holiday.She minimizes grazing.One sugar-filled night won’t sabotage your oral health, Dr. Ribeiro said —…

The Toll: Nearly five days of poor mental health a month.Federal researchers tracked self-reported mental health symptoms among more than a thousand adult workers in 2018 and 2022, including 226 health care workers in 2018 and 325 in 2022. Compared with other groups surveyed, health care workers reported a substantial jump in poor mental health days in the month prior, from 3.3 in 2018 to 4.5 in 2022. Less than 30 percent of health workers last year described themselves as very happy, a decline from 2018. More than a third reported symptoms of depression, while more than half said they…