Aaron Rodgers, perhaps the most gifted N.F.L. quarterback of his generation, spent a week last month in Costa Rica with a handful of fellow pro football players in search of transformation. At a mountain retreat with views of the Pacific Ocean, they drank a psychedelic brew under the watchful eyes of a Yawanawa shaman and […]
Read MoreTag: Vaccination and Immunization
Millions of Girls in Africa Will Miss HPV Shots After Merck Production Problem
Nearly 1.5 million teenage girls in some of the world’s poorest countries will miss the chance to be protected from cervical cancer because the drugmaker Merck has said it will not be able to deliver millions of promised doses of the HPV vaccine this year. Merck has notified Gavi, the international organization that helps low- […]
Read MoreFour Wild Ways to Save the Koala (That Just Might Work)
It was spring in Queensland, Australia, a season when many wild animals find themselves in trouble, and the Currumbin Wildlife Hospital was a blur of fur and feathers. A groggy black swan emerged from the X-ray room, head swaying on its long neck. A flying fox wore a tiny anesthetic mask. An injured rainbow lorikeet […]
Read MoreThe Push for a Better Dengue Vaccine Grows More Urgent
The outbreak of dengue fever that has unfolded in Latin America over the past three months is staggering in its scale — a million cases in Brazil in a matter of weeks, a huge spike in Argentina, a state of emergency declared in Peru, and now another, in Puerto Rico. It forewarns of a changing […]
Read MoreGlobal Stockpile of Cholera Vaccine Is Gone as Outbreaks Spread
Doses of cholera vaccine are being given to patients as fast as they are produced and the global stockpile has run completely dry, as deadly outbreaks of the disease continue to spread. This does not shock anyone in the field of emergency epidemic response because the vaccine stockpile has been precariously low for years. The […]
Read MoreIs Bird Flu Coming to People Next? Are We Ready?
Bird flu outbreaks among dairy cows in multiple states, and at least one infection in farmworker in Texas, have incited fears that the virus may be the next infectious threat to people. The influenza virus, called H5N1, is highly pathogenic, meaning it has the ability to cause severe disease and death. But while its spread […]
Read MoreDengue Fever Is Surging and We’re Looking the Other Way
I hate mosquitoes so much that I bring my own bug repellent to parties. But in early March, on a trip with my partner to the idyllic island of Curaçao off the coast of Venezuela, I was caught off guard by insect bites after our bed-and-breakfast hosts said that mosquitoes didn’t usually appear until late […]
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