Abortion funding ban expanded, cholera crisis in Yemen, & hearing heart cells beat

Trump expands global ban on funding tied to abortions

The Trump administration has expanded the so-called global gag rule that bans US funding for international health programs which provide abortions or abortion counseling. The current rule, also known as the Mexico City policy, prohibits the use of US family planning dollars for foreign aid groups that provide or promote abortions. President Trump put the policy — first introduced during the Reagan era — back into effect in January after former President Obama overturned it. Now, Trump is broadly expanding the policy to ban any US global health money from going to organizations that also provide or promote abortions — which could have implications for everything from preventive health to AIDS medications.

State of emergency in Yemen amid cholera crisis

Health officials are rushing to respond to a dangerous cholera outbreak in Yemen. There have been at least 124 deaths and thousands of suspected cases of cholera since late April, the WHO says. Cholera is an acute infection that’s caused by a bacterium in contaminated food or water and, in severe infections, can be fatal. The United Nations says two-thirds of people in Yemen are without access to clean drinking water.

"The conditions are perfect for cholera’s spread," Tarik Jašarević of the WHO tells me. They're particularly worried about cases of cholera that have cropped up in Sana’a, Yemen’s largest city, where there’s a high risk that the deadly disease will continue to spread. Global health groups have dispatched drugs and medical supplies to bolster the response from the Yemeni health system. Two years of conflict that have left the nation’s health facilities damaged or destroyed. "The treatment itself should be simple ... but in the middle of a conflict, it is not so easy," Jašarević says.

The leading causes of death among adolescents

A new global health report out this morning finds that more than 1.2 million adolescents die each year, and many of those deaths could be prevented. Here’s a quick look at the findings:

§ Road injuries were the leading cause of death among 10- to 19-year-olds worldwide. About 115,000 adolescents die each year in road accidents, most of whom are pedestrians, cyclists, or motorcyclists.

§ Lower-respiratory infections, self-harm, diarrheal diseases, and drowning top out the rest of the five most common causes of death among adolescents.

§ More than 42,000 young men die each year due to interpersonal violence, the second most common cause of death among 10- to 19-year-old males.

§ Complications from labor and unsafe abortions are the leading cause of death among 15- to 19-year-old young women. Lower respiratory infections such as pneumonia are the most common cause of death for younger girls, which health officials say are often a result of indoor air pollution while cooking with unsafe fuels.

Inside STAT: Texas lawmakers debate unproven drugs

Texas Representative Drew Springer made an emotional plea last week to his colleagues to pass HB 810, one of three bills being considered by state legislators to make it easier for sick people to try unproven therapies, including certain stem cell treatments, at their own risk. "It might give somebody like my wife a chance to walk,” said Springer, whose wife is paralyzed from the waist down. The ongoing debate in Texas echoes a national discussion about whether patients should have access to experimental therapies. Lawmakers supporting the bills say patients should have the ability to make decisions about their own health care. But for stem cell researchers and patient advocates, the bills pose a threat. STAT's Andrew Joseph has more.

Lab Chat: A tiny device that can hear beating heart cells

nano-optical fibers on the lookout for swimming bacteria. (Rhett S. Miller/UC Regents)

Scientists have created a tiny, nano-sized sensor that can pick up on the force of bacteria swimming in a dish and can detect the sound of a beating heart cell. It’s an optical fiber 100 times thinner than a single human hair. Here’s what nanoengineer Donald Sirbuly of the University of California, San Diego, told me about the work, published in Nature Photonics.

How does the device work?

The device is basically a small fiber optic that has a compressible polymer coating on it. If you imagine a mass being placed on a spring, the spring will compress by an amount dependent on how heavy the mass is. Now if you knew a little bit about the mechanical properties of the spring, [such as] its stiffness, you could place any unknown mass on the spring and back out the exact force that was being applied. We have basically taken this basic principle of physics and shrunk it way down in size.

What does it allow you to do?

We demonstrated that these nanofibers can not only detect faint forces when the particles are touched directly, but they can also hear acoustic signatures generated by cells. This is very unique, because we now have an extremely small ear that can go inside of materials or cells and listen without having to be in physical contact.

Senators urge Trump to secure Cures funding

Eleven Democratic senators have just fired off a letter to President Trump urging him to reconsider his proposed 18 percent cut to HHS funding. They're worried it will significantly scale back the department's ability to implement the 21st Century Cures Act, a bipartisan law passed last year. "The 21^st Century Cures Act invests in tackling our hardest-to-treat diseases, commits real dollars to the fight against the opioid epidemic, makes badly-needed changes to mental health care, and ensures that investments in research will benefit all Americans," they write. The senators say slashing the health department's budget will jeopardize that work.

Here's how many kids had public insurance in 2016

As the Senate continues to tackle the health care bill, new national numbers show the continued impact of Obamacare on insurance rates in the US. There were 28.6 million people — about 9 percent of the population — uninsured in 2016. That’s 20 million fewer people uninsured than in 2010, before the health law was fully implemented. One statistic that’s sure to come up in ongoing conversations about Medicaid cuts: 43 percent of kids were covered by public insurance in 2016. The AHCA would cut $880 billion over 10 years from Medicaid.

The new report also shows that the percentage of people enrolled in high-deductible health plans rose from 36 percent in 2015 to 39 percent in 2016. For more on living with a high-deductible insurance plan, read this.