1st human case of flesh-eating parasite detected in US
Lidya Elfa Sari via Getty Images
(WASHINGTON) — The U.S. has confirmed the first case of a flesh-eating parasite in a human, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) said on Monday.
New World screwworm (NWS) is a species of parasitic flies that feed on live tissue. The name refers to the way in which maggots screw themselves into the tissue of animals with their sharp mouth hooks, causing extensive damage and often leading to death.
The patient returned from travel to El Salvador, an HHS spokesperson told ABC News in a statement. The risk to the public in the U.S. is very low, they added.
Countries in Central America and Mexico have been dealing with an outbreak of the parasite among livestock.
Panama saw infections among livestock rise from an average of 25 cases annually to over 6,500 in 2023, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) says. Since then, the parasite has been detected in seven other Central American countries, breaking a previously established barrier that contained the pest to South America for decades.
Screwworm has not been detected in animals within the U.S., the USDA noted. It was largely eradicated for decades in the U.S. through a technique in which male screwworm flies are sterilized and then released into the environment to mate with females until the population dies out.
But given the spread in neighboring countries, “[NWS] is not only a threat to our ranching community — but it is a threat to our food supply and our national security,” the USDA said in a press release where they outlined initiatives to prevent the parasite from crossing into the U.S.
Those initiatives include building a sterile fly production facility in Texas and hiring mounted patrol officers to track wildlife crossing as well as detector dogs to track imports along ports of entry. In May, the USDA banned imports of live cattle, horse and bison from Mexico and has since slowly re-opened trade.
Earlier this month, the FDA issued an Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) for animal drugs to treat or prevent infestations caused by screwworm.
People who travel to outbreak areas, spend time among livestock animals, sleep outdoors, and have an open wound are at greater risk of becoming infested with screwworm, the CDC noted.
This is 4 million more children than the 2024 target set by the WHO and 1.4 million more children than in 2019, which is the baseline year for measuring progress.
About 25% of the world’s infants live in 26 countries that are affected by conflict, fragility or humanitarian crises, but they make up half of all unvaccinated children, according to the global health agency.
Children are unvaccinated or under-vaccinated for many reasons including lack of access, disrupted supply, conflict and instability, or misinformation about vaccines.
“Stalling of vaccine coverage, even the smallest drops in immunization coverage as measured at the country level, can have devastating consequences,” Dr. Kate O’Brien, director of the WHO’s Department of Immunization, Vaccines and Biologicals, said during a press briefing on Monday. “It opens the door to deadly disease outbreaks and puts even more pressure on health systems that are already stretched. Immunization Agenda 2030 targets are in reach to protect more children [with] life-saving vaccines.”
Immunization Agenda 2030 is in reference to a series of goals put forth by the World Health Assembly to address challenges in improving access.
However, there were some bright spots in the report. In 2024, 89% of infants globally, equivalent to about 115 million, received at least one dose of the diphtheria, tetanus and pertussis (DTP)-containing vaccine, and 85%, roughly 109 million, completed all three doses.
By comparison, in 2023, about 171,000 more children received at least one vaccine and one million more children received the three doses.
Protection against measles also improved, with 84% of children receiving the first dose and 76% receiving the second dose. While these are slight increases from the previous year, it means 30 million children are unprotected, especially as the world faces an increasing number of outbreaks.
“The good news is that we have managed to reach more children with life-saving vaccines. But millions of children remain without protection against preventable diseases, and that should worry us all,” Catherine Russell, executive director of UNICEF, said in a statement.
“We must act now with determination to overcome barriers like shrinking health budgets, fragile health systems along with misinformation and access constraints because of conflicts. No child should die from a disease we know how to prevent,” Russell said.
The release of the data came just a few weeks after Health and Human Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said the U.S. was pulling its funding from GAVI, an international organization that works to improve access to vaccines, claiming the organization “ignored the science.”
Kennedy claimed in a video posted online that the U.S. had provided $8 billion in funding to GAVI since 2001.
Public health officials called on governments around the world to help fill the gaps in funding, although the U.S. withholding funds was not explicitly stated.
“It is really, really important that maintaining these coverage trends, which are quite easily fragile unless efforts are sustained,” Dr. Ephrem Lemango, associate director for health and global chief of immunization at UNICEF, said during Monday’s press briefing.
“It is important that we maintain our commitment to immunization, and we’re calling on governments and partners and communities to do all that is necessary to maintain immunization coverage, including closing the funding gaps, serving communities in conflict and fragile settings, and addressing misinformation,” Lemango said.
In this April 24, 2024, file photo, a group of doctors join abortion rights supporters at a rally outside the Supreme Court in Washington, D.C. The Supreme Court hears oral arguments today on Moyle v. United States and Idaho v. United States to decide if Idaho emergency rooms can provide abortions to pregnant women during an emergency using a federal law known as the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act to supersede a state law that criminalizes most abortions in Idaho. Andrew Harnik/Getty
(IDAHO) — More than six months after Idaho’s near-total abortion ban went into effect, a small town nestled in the state’s northern mountain ranges lost its labor and delivery service — and access to such care could now be imperiled further by looming Medicaid cuts.
Bonner General Health, located in Sandpoint, Idaho, announced in March 2023 that it would no longer provide obstetrical care, citing the state’s “legal and political climate” as one of the factors that drove the decision. Abortions in Idaho are illegal except in the cases of rape, incest and the life of the mother.
The hospital in the city of around 10,000 people was one of three health systems in Idaho to shutter their labor and delivery services in recent years. The state has lost over a third of its OB-GYNs — 94 of 268 — since the ban was enacted in 2022, according to a new study in medical journal JAMA Network Open.
Local health care providers and advocates ABC News spoke with said that Medicaid cuts could put additional labor and delivery services at risk of closing — adding further pressure to Idaho’s already strained maternal and reproductive health care system.
More than 350,000 of the state’s residents are insured by Medicaid, including those covered by the expansion plan voters approved through a ballot measure in 2018. Idaho was already seeking federal approval to institute its own work requirements after Gov. Brad Little signed a Medicaid cost bill this spring.
Under the federal changes, the state could lose $3 billion in funding over the next decade and 37,000 residents could lose coverage, according to analysis by KFF.
“We are living with the consequences of when you criminalize practicing medicine, you lose doctors, and I think that, coupled with these cuts at the federal level, are going to prove devastating for Idaho’s already precarious rural health system,” Melanie Folwell, the executive director of Idahoans United for Women and Families, the group spearheading a ballot initiative to restore abortion rights, told ABC News.
After Bonner General closed its obstetric services, Kootenai Health, located an hour south, inherited its patients, which included residents across the northern tip of the state. Some women now have to drive two to three hours to get prenatal care or to deliver at Kootenai, according to one of its OB-GYNs, Dr. Brenna McCrummen.
Traveling that far for care, especially in cases of complications, can endanger women and infants, McCrummen noted.
“There have been patients that have delivered on the side of the road because they’re not able to get to the hospital in time. There have been babies that have gone to the NICU who didn’t do as well as they probably would have had they not had to travel long distances,” she told ABC News.
The loss of OB-GYNs in the state has hit rural areas like those in the north especially hard, the JAMA Network Open study noted. A vast majority of the remaining physicians providing obstetric care are concentrated in Idaho’s seven most populated counties, leaving only 23 OB-GYNs to serve a population of over half a million across the rest of the state, according to the study.
Those giving birth aren’t the only ones affected by the shortage of physicians. OB-GYNs like McCrummen have packed schedules, leading to long wait times for other reproductive care. Patients seeking annual exams, for instance, often have to book five months in advance, McCrummen explained. These exams provide vital preventive health services, such as screenings for cervical and breast cancer.
Across the U.S., more than 35% of counties are maternity care deserts — areas that lack obstetrics clinicians — according to Dr. Michael Warren, the chief medical and health officer of the March of Dimes, a nonprofit focused on maternal and infant health.
Reductions to Medicaid funding could exacerbate the problem, Warren told ABC News.
“The worry is that as these changes are happening in the Medicaid space, it’s going to be harder, particularly for rural hospitals, to maintain those obstetric services, and if they discontinue those, we’ve got more maternity care deserts, and we’ve got a greater risk of both moms and babies having worse outcomes,” Warren said.
The Medicaid cuts were passed into law in July as part of President Donald Trump’s massive tax and policy bill. Idaho Sen. Mike Crapo, a Republican who serves as chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, defended the bill in a press release earlier this month, saying that “targeting waste, fraud and abuse in the program ensures that it stays financially viable for the populations who need it most.” Crapo has also argued that the legislation’s $50 billion rural hospital fund is the “largest investment in decades in rural health care.”
In Idaho, Medicaid covers around a third of births, according to data from March of Dimes. Even before cuts to coverage, labor and delivery units were difficult to keep open, Toni Lawson, a vice president of the Idaho Hospital Association, told ABC News.
Lawson explained that such units require “special equipment” and “specially trained staff” on call, which is expensive to maintain — especially in rural areas with lower birth volumes and where Medicaid reimburses less than cost. Additionally, she said, hospitals have had difficulty recruiting and retaining qualified OB-GYNs amidst Idaho’s abortion restrictions.
As a result, looming reductions to Medicaid funding could push these healthcare systems over the edge, according to Lawson.
“What you’ll see in Idaho, before you see hospitals close, is we’ll have more closures of labor and delivery services,” she said.
These cuts could also worsen outcomes for the women who lose coverage, physician assistant specialist Amy Klingler explained.
“If patients don’t have access to insurance and they don’t have access to Medicaid, sometimes they delay prenatal care, we don’t catch complications early enough, and it puts the baby and the mother’s lives at risk,” Klingler, who works in a small mountain town in central Idaho, told ABC News.
The two problems can compound — Klingler noted that the risk of not catching complications early on is heightened when the same women also have to travel further to receive care.
While she is able to provide prenatal care to her patients, the closest hospital that can deliver babies is a 60-mile drive from her clinic — a route she says that lacks cell service for 45 miles.
“So in the best circumstances, it takes planning and forethought. And then when things are serious and complicated, it’s much more dangerous,” Klingler said.
“Complicated pregnancies in Idaho are the scary ones right now,” she added.
In cases when the mother’s health becomes at risk, health providers say that the state’s abortion ban limits the emergency care they are able to provide. A state court issued a ruling in April slightly expanding the medical exception to the ban in response to a lawsuit filed by the Center for Reproductive Rights, but advocates still argue the existing law constricts physicians’ ability to supply adequate care.
The organization Idahoans United for Women and Families is currently gathering signatures to get a measure on the ballot in 2026 to return the state to the standard of abortion access it had before the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022.
However, Lawson said “there is no silver bullet” to solve depleted access to maternal and reproductive care.
“It is going to have to be a combination of things and certainly removing barriers to recruitment is an important part of that,” she said, adding that the state must also address rural hospitals’ precarious financial position amid the projected loss of Medicaid funding.
Breana Lipscomb, the senior manager of maternal health and rights at advocacy group the Center for Reproductive Rights, noted that all of these factors are “working in tandem” to restrict access.
“It’s making health care even further out of reach for people, and this is particularly concerning for Black people, for people living in rural areas, for low income folks and for people with capacity to birth,” Lipscomb said.
“I am really afraid of what we might see,” she added.
Yersinia pestis, bacteria responsible for the plague, seen under optical microscopy. (Universal Images Group via Getty ImagesP
(VALENCIA COUNTY, N.M.) — A New Mexico man has been diagnosed with plague, marking the state’s first human case this year, according to local health officials.
The patient, a 43-year-old man from Valencia County — located just southwest of Albuquerque — was hospitalized with the condition but has since been discharged, the New Mexico Department of Health (NMDOH) said on Monday.
Recently, the patient had been camping in Rio Arriba County, which borders Colorado, where health officials believe he may have been exposed.
No other identifying information about the man was available, including his name or race/ethnicity.
“This case reminds us of the severe threat that can be posed by this ancient disease,” Dr. Erin Phipps, state public health veterinarian for NMDOH, said in a press release. “It also emphasizes the need for heightened community awareness and for taking measures to prevent further spread.”
Plague is a disease caused by the bacterium Yersinia pestis. It naturally occurs in areas of the western U.S., according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC),
It typically affects wild rodents including wood rats, rock squirrels, ground squirrels, mice, prairie dogs and chipmunks, the CDC said.
Humans can contract the disease after being bitten by an infected flea, coming into contact with contaminated fluid or tissue from an infected animal or by inhaling infected droplets in the air.
The CDC notes that person-to-person spread of plague has not been documented in the U.S. since 1924.
In recent decades, an average of seven human plague cases have been reported each year, according to the CDC.
Plague is a disease caused by the bacterium Yersinia pestis. It naturally occurs in areas of the western U.S., according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC),
It typically affects wild rodents including wood rats, rock squirrels, ground squirrels, mice, prairie dogs and chipmunks, the CDC said.
Humans can contract the disease after being bitten by an infected flea, coming into contact with contaminated fluid or tissue from an infected animal or by inhaling infected droplets in the air.
The CDC notes that person-to-person spread of plague has not been documented in the U.S. since 1924.
In recent decades, an average of seven human plague cases have been reported each year, according to the CDC.
There are three types of plague: bubonic plague, which is associated with enlarged lymph nodes called buboes; septicemic plague, which occurs when the bacteria enter the bloodstream; and pneumonic plague, which is when the infection enters the lungs.
Common symptoms of all three include headache, fever and weakness, according to the CDC.
Plague is treatable with commonly available antibiotics and the chances of full recovery are higher if a patient seeks medical care early, the CDC says.
To reduce the risk of plague, the NMDOH recommends avoiding sick or dead rodents and rabbits; cleaning up areas near the home where rodents could live; using insect repellent when outdoors; and keeping hay and wood as far away from the house as possible.
Additionally, the NMDOH recommends having a sick pet examined immediately by a veterinarian.
Although this is the first human case of plague recorded in New Mexico this year, it is not the first in the U.S.
