4-month-old baby dies in extreme heat wave: Tips to keep kids safe
(PHOENIX) — A 4-month-old baby died in Arizona last week after suffering a heat-related illness while on a boat, according to police.
The infant’s death comes amid an ongoing heat wave in the U.S. affecting tens of millions of people across multiple states.
The infant, who was not identified by police, was rescued from a boat on Lake Havasu on July 5 and transported to a local hospital, according to authorities.
From there, the infant was taken to Phoenix Children’s Hospital, where they “succumbed to their injuries,” the Mohave County Sheriff’s Office said in a statement released Monday.
The sheriff’s office said the investigation into the child’s death is “ongoing.”
A sheriff spokesperson told ABC News Wednesday the office is not releasing any further information.
On Wednesday, a spokesperson for the medical examiner’s office in Maricopa County, where Phoenix Children’s Hospital is located, identified the infant as Tanna Rae Wroblewski and said her cause of death has not yet been determined.
A GoFundMe page established for the Wroblewski family states that they were enjoying a “family day on the lake” when the infant “lost consciousness” and family members started performing CPR.
“Lake Havasu City Fire Department quickly arrived to take over life-saving procedures. Tanna was rushed to Havasu Regional Medical Center where they continued to work on her to get a pulse,” the fundraiser states. “She was then airlifted to Phoenix Children’s Hospital where they did everything in their power to revive her, but God had other plans, and took Tanna to heaven that night.”
Attempts to reach members of the Wroblewski family by ABC News were not successful.
In the Lake Havasu area, temperatures over the past week have hit triple digits, reaching as high as 120 degrees Fahrenheit, according to the National Weather Service.
As of Tuesday, more than 70 million people were under heat alerts in the West amid a scorching heat wave enveloping much of the U.S., but particularly the West Coast.
How to protect kids from heat
According to the American Academy of Pediatrics, children are more susceptible than adults to the health effects of extreme temperatures, including extreme heat, because they cannot regulate their body temperature as well as adults.
When it comes to extreme heat, children may suffer health effects including heat exhaustion, heat cramps and heat stroke, according to the AAP.
Parents and caregivers should do their best to keep kids in indoor, air-conditioned areas in periods of extreme heat, and make sure kids are well-rested and hydrated.
Symptoms of heat-related illness to watch for in babies and kids include faintness, extreme tiredness, intense thirst, headaches, fever, nausea, vomiting, hyperventilation and skin numbness or tingling, according to the AAP.
(NEW YORK) — Isabella Strahan is on her road to a full recovery!
In a new update on Thursday from a video on her YouTube channel, the 19-year-old daughter of “Good Morning America” co-anchor Michael Strahan shared that she is officially cancer-free.
Earlier this year, Isabella Strahan publicly revealed she had been diagnosed with medulloblastoma, a type of brain tumor.
In her latest vlog titled, “Goodbye Hospital,” Isabella Strahan shared that she was at her last appointment at the Duke Children’s Hospital & Health Center in Durham, N.C., to review results from her scans.
“It was a great, great scan,” she said with a smile on her face. “Everything was clear. Cancer-free and everything is great. I don’t have another doctor’s appointment until October.”
She continued, “I miss my doctors already and everyone who’s helped me because they’re all so nice… I feel like I’m just saddened today knowing that I wasn’t gonna be going back for awhile because I love them so much. So, that was my last hospital vlog until October!”
Isabella Strahan was a freshman at the University of Southern California when an initial MRI scan in October ultimately led to her diagnosis of medulloblastoma, a cancerous and fast-growing brain tumor that develops in the cerebellum, the back of the brain where movement and coordination are controlled, according to the Preston Robert Tisch Brain Tumor Center at Duke University, where she is being treated.
Medulloblastoma is a type of malignant tumor that accounts for about 20% of all childhood brain tumors, according to estimates published in the Journal of Clinical Neuroscience.
The new update comes after Isabella Strahan shared on her Vlog last month that she completed her final round of chemotherapy.
“This [has been] a long journey but I made it,” she said at the time. “And now I have to recover and get back to my usual state, which is going to take a long time, but I’m done with treatments.”
She was also celebrated by friends, family and hospital staff over the accomplishment with a confetti parade at the hospital before ringing the bell to signify the end of chemotherapy.
Marking the milestone, Michael Strahan took to Instagram to celebrate the moment and gush over his daughter.
“@isabellastrahan you are a SUPERWOMAN! Ringing that bell finishing chemo and on your way!” he captioned a video of her ringing the bell. “You continue to fight with a smile on your face, strength, and determination. I am one proud Dad! Love you, Bella.”
(WASHINGTON) When Congress passed the Inflation Reduction Act in 2022, there was a key provision that the Biden administration fought hard for. For years, private insurance companies negotiated with drug makers over prescription prices.
However, Medicare, representing 50 million seniors, did not have the same right to negotiate prices for its Part D coverage. This meant that Medicare basically had to accept the prices offered to them.
Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra joined “Start Here,” ABC News’ flagship daily news podcast, earlier this year to announce that negotiations were starting. They had selected 10 medications to prioritize and attempt to bargain down prices.
On Thursday, during the first public event held by President Biden and Vice President Harris since the Biden dropped out of the presidential race, they revealed that they had agreed on all issues. This is being described as a significant development for anyone on Medicare, and for anyone who pays taxes to fund the expenses of Medicare.
Secretary Becerra joined “Start Here” on Friday to discuss this further.
START HERE: Mr. Secretary, last time we spoke you had just identified the drugs…they included some diabetes drugs, some arthritis medications, treatments for blood clots and blood cancer. Where are we now?
BECERRA: We are done with the negotiation, Brad. We have completed 10 drugs. Every company joined in the negotiations. We had offers, counter offers, and we hit a sweet spot with all ten. And that sweet spot will save Americans on Medicare who need these drugs lots of money. And it will save taxpayers who help fund the Medicare program lots of money, in the billions.
START HERE: Yeah. How much of a discount are we talking about here?
BECERRA: So in some cases, the discount from the list price is up to 79%. I think the lowest discount is about 38%. And I do want to caveat that a bit. Very rarely does anybody pay list price for anything. And if you do, take it back and bargain a bit. Whether it’s that car at the dealership where you look at list price, you don’t pay that. When you go to the department store, you try to find everything you can on sale or, you know at some point it’s going to go on sale.
And so everybody makes the effort to try to get the best price for whatever the product is. In this case, it’s a very important product, it’s your prescription medication. But you should still be able to get a good price, and that’s what we did. We negotiated and got a much better price than what Medicare was getting.
START HERE: But just so we can we can be clear about that caveat. You’re saying it’s 68%, say it’s like 79% less than the list price. But you guys weren’t paying the list price earlier. Can you tell us how much you were paying on these drugs beforehand, and how much the new discount you’ve gotten is?
BECERRA: Yeah. And that’s where it gets a little dicey because there are lots of nooks and crannies in the health care system. Some of them include what are, what is considered proprietary information of the companies, the drug companies, that they don’t want disclosed. And so the net price that Medicare pays is lower than the list price, but still high.
START HERE: So there’s some contract somewhere being like “You guys, no one can disclose what you guys had originally been paying.”
BECERRA: Yeah. We can’t, we can’t take you behind the curtain unless the drug companies tell us it’s okay to do so.
START HERE: Were you able to actually push back against these drug companies, or was it kind of like “We’ll ask once and then we’ll have to take what we get. We’re not going to risk not giving Americans these, these drugs.”
BECERRA: Well, let’s just say that when they came in with their offer or counteroffer, the final price was neither our initial offer nor their official offer. But here’s what I will tell you. The Congressional Budget Office, which is Congress’ budget estimator, they’re the ones that keep tabs of what legislation will cost — will it save money or will it cost taxpayers money? And they are very stingy when it comes to saying “Oh, taxpayers will save money.” Right?
Well, the Congressional Budget Office said with regard to the Inflation Reduction Act and prescription drug negotiation, they said, we believe in the first year of negotiation — which we just finished — in that first year, and they’re projecting because they didn’t know which drugs it would be, etc.. They said, we believe the Department of Health Human Services will save $3.7 billion. Well, we’ve saved $6 billion.
And on top of that, we’re saving people out of pocket another billion and a half. But here’s the kicker. They said over 10 years, they assume that this new law, over 10 years of negotiating, will save $100 billion. So if we’re already almost double their first estimate for their first year, I guarantee you we’re going to do better than the 100 billion, over 10 years.
START HERE: Okay. When do the new prices go into effect, then I guess?
BECERRA: Jan. 1, 2026.
START HERE: Okay, so when that kicks in, how much of a discount will average Medicare patients actually see? Because, like, if you guys scored a 68% discount on Farxiga, like the diabetes kidney medication, does that mean that the person using that drug is going to pay, it doesn’t mean they’re going to pay 68% less. I mean, how much less would it be?
BECERRA: Yeah. So remember, and that’s also a difficult question because seniors don’t typically pay very much for their prescription medication. Medicare the program, that’s the beauty of Medicare, it covers the lion’s share of the cost of those drugs. Some Americans still have to pay some out-of-pocket costs for their drugs, especially the higher cost drugs. So we’re going to save folks quite a bit of money.
Let’s put it this way: I can talk to you in total aggregate terms. We can now look at the price that we negotiated and say “Okay, if we had this price back in 2023, what would our cost have been?” And the result is we would have saved $6 billion to the health care program, and Americans will be able to save about a billion and a half dollars collectively in their out-of-pocket costs.
START HERE: The trade group that represents companies like Pfizer, Lilly, Merck, they’ve said we might not see as much innovation because we’re not getting as much money. That’s, that’s constantly been sort of a critique of this. They also say that your math makes assumptions about how many people truly save money on this. They say a very small amount of people actually get this Part D plan in the way that would actually save the money here. What is your response to to to these pharmaceutical groups?
BECERRA: Well, remember, they’re more than 50 million Americans who have prescription coverage under Medicare, the Part D program. There are about 9 million people in the Medicare program who use one of these 10 drugs. It’s not a small universe of people. And these are very expensive drugs. When you can bring the price down of a drug that’s listed for, say, $10,000, $12,000 to $3,000. That’s a pretty good deal. It’s still $3,000, but it sure saved you a ton of money. If you were paid $12,000 or 13,000 before that.
And so this will save not just the Medicare program money, but it will save Medicare beneficiaries money. And it certainly will pay taxpayers who today, when they work, have some of their money from their paycheck taken out so they could cover their Medicare investment into the future so that when they get turned 65, they can qualify. They will get to benefit from a strengthened Medicare program that will have those new resources available, because we didn’t have to spend it at, for overcharging us for the prescription medication.
START HERE: Well, so now, I mean, the idea is that you’ll negotiate more drug prices, right? So you got these 10 out of the way. What are the next 10 or the next 20, or do you guys have a sense of what types of drugs you’re looking to target?
BECERRA: Yeah. And here I have to be careful, because everything we say about a drug can move the price on the market. Right? And I don’t want to be accused of trying to influence the price up or down. And so what I can tell you is the statute, the new law, the Inflation Reduction Act, gave a pretty clear prescription of how to select these, set of drugs that will be negotiated. That’s a, it’s a good thing in the way, in a sense that it doesn’t let politics enter into this. It was pretty clear which drugs count. In this case, the first 10, they had to be the most expensive drugs in the Medicare system.
START HERE: All right. So then we’ll see what happens next. All right. Secretary Xavier Becerra, thank you so much.
(NEW YORK) — Pfizer announced early Thursday morning that it has selected its preferred once-daily modified release formulation of danuglipron, a move that it said was a significant milestone in the obesity drug’s development.
Danuglipron, an oral glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1) receptor agonist, will undergo dose optimization studies in the second half of 2024 as Pfizer seeks to evaluate multiple doses of the formulation which they hope will inform the registration-enabling studies.
“Obesity is a key therapeutic area for Pfizer, and the company has a robust pipeline of three clinical and several pre-clinical candidates. The most advanced of them, danuglipron, has demonstrated good efficacy in a twice-daily formulation, and we believe a once-daily formulation has the potential to have a competitive profile in the oral GLP-1 space,” said Mikael Dolsten, MD., PhD., chief scientific officer & president, Pfizer Research and Development. “Following a thorough analysis of our previous Phase 2b data and trial design, we believe that with the preferred modified release formulation and future trial design optimization, we can advance a competitive oral GLP-1 molecule into registration enabling studies, with the goal of addressing the present and persistent medical needs of people living with obesity.”
Participants in the study so far have included healthy adults aged 18 years or older and the results thus far have shown a profile that supports once-daily dosing, which is consistent with previous danuglipron studies. Notably, there have been no liver enzyme elevations observed among the more than 1,400 study participants.
Danuglipron is an investigational medicine that is taken as a tablet by mouth and is currently not approved for use by health authorities.
Current popular FDA approved weight loss medications Wegovy and Zepbound are weekly injections.
Pfizer will still need to do large scale clinical trials to produce the data necessary to show it’s safe, effective and tolerable and then submit to FDA — a process which is still likely much further down the line.