Immunization

The Kentucky Republican is airing an ad across 100 radio stations in his state urging people to get vaccinated, as the highly contagious Delta variant of Covid-19 ravages parts of the country, particularly red states with higher rates of unvaccinated people. The 60-second ad, narrated by the highest-ranking Republican in the Senate, began airing on Thursday morning, according to a source familiar with the plans, who also said that this is just the first part of a larger effort that McConnell is undertaking to encourage Americans to get vaccinated. In the ad, obtained by CNN, McConnell references his personal experience with polio, recalling how as a young boy he "faced a different disease. I contracted polio," and "back then, it took decades for us to develop a vaccine." He called the creation of three safe and highly effective Covid-19 vaccines in less than a year "nothing short of a modern medical miracle." "Every American should take advantage of t...

Introduction The COVID-19 pandemic has caused substantial disruption to children and adolescents through potential threat of illness to themselves and others, school closures, exam disruption, restrictions to social interactions, and increased family pressures (Office for National Statistics, 2020 ). Pandemic-associated restrictions have meant that children and adolescents have often experienced prolonged periods of social isolation in addition to increased feelings of uncertainty and high levels of stress amongst the adults around them (Dalton, Rapa, & Stein, 2020 ). The most robust evidence to date for the prevalence of mental health difficulties during the pandemic comes from the NHS Digital survey of children and adolescents' mental health in England (NHS Digital, 2020 ) that reported that the proportion of children and adolescents with a probable mental health disorder was 1 in 6 in July 2020 ...

Illustration by Sophi Miyoko Gullbrants In the spring of 1846, a Dutch physician named Peter Ludwig Panum arrived on the Faroe Islands, a volcanic chain about two hundred miles northwest of Scotland. He found the Faroes to be a harsh and unforgiving place. The islands' eight thousand inhabitants, who were Danish subjects at that time, spent their days outdoors, buffeted by sea winds, fishing and tending sheep. The conditions, Panum wrote, were unlikely "to prolong the lives of the inhabitants." And yet, despite the scarcity of medical care and a diet of wind-dried, sometimes rancid meat, the average Faroese life span was forty-five years, which matched or exceeded that in mainland Denmark. The islanders benefitted from a near-complete lack of infectious disease; many illnesses, including smallpox and scarlet fever, rarely reached them. Panum had arrived to study a measles epidemic—the first outbreak of that virus in the Faroe Islands in sixty-five years. For the most part...

Contact: Caroline Cornish 207-662-5146 (office) ccornish@mainehealth.org PORTLAND, Maine — Maine Medical Partners announces the following new hires. Kellie A. Sprague, MD , has joined MaineHealth Cancer Care in South Portland as the new director of the hematologic malignancies program. She was most recently the director of the bone marrow and stem cell transplant program at Tufts Medical Center, Boston. She was also assistant professor of medicine, division of hematology-oncology, Tufts University School of Medicine. Dr. Sprague earned a medical degree from the University of Vermont College of Medicine, Burlington. She completed her clinical fellowships and residency at Tufts-New England Medical Center. She is Board certified in internal medicine, medical oncology and hematology. Dr. Sprague was also included in the 2021 Boston Magazine Top Doctors in Hematology. Cecilia Trydestam MD, MS, FACS , has joined Maine Medical Partners – Surgical Care, in the division of general surger...

KOLAR: A three-month-old girl who was administered pentavalent vaccine on Tuesday died under mysterious circumstances at Bevahalli village in Mulbagal taluk in the wee hours of Wednesday. While family members alleged there was a mix up of the vaccines, health authorities attached to Gudipalli PHC who conducted the vaccine drive at Bevahalli said the baby might have died of 'aspiration' after her mother breast fed her at midnight. Aspiration is where a foreign object, say food, is sucked into the airways or lungs and often leads to death by asphyxiation. A Covid vaccination camp was held in Bevahalli, about 110km from Bengaluru and home to 800 households, on Tuesday and about 25 persons were administered Covaxin in the afternoon session. Radha Rani, senior nurse with the PHC, said it would be better if the eight kids due for pentavalent vaccination too were given the shot. With the help of an Asha worker attached to the village, Rani asked the mothers to get their kids jabbed to...

The Association for Professionals in Infection Control and Epidemiology received a grant under the CDC's Project Firstline program to bolster IP educational opportunities. The infection preventionist (IP) profession, which faces some demographic and systemic challenges, may have just gotten a shot in the arm today thanks to Project Firstline. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) launched the $180 million Project Firstline last October in an attempt to teach basic infection prevention and control techniques to all health care providers. Now, it appears that the CDC wants the main organization that represents IPs—the Association for Professionals in Infection Control and Epidemiology (APIC)—to play a role in that effort. APIC announced today in a press release that it has been chosen "as a subcontractor to conduct research and provide recommendations for development of infection control (IC) coursework for vocational programs, community colleges, and schools and ...