Health News Roundup: Measles surveillance lags in U.S. workplaces: African swine fever hits sixth pig farm in Bulgaria

Following is a summary of current health news briefs.

Measles surveillance lags in U.S. workplaces, expert says

Monitoring for measles in U.S. workplaces needs improvement, especially in the healthcare sector, an occupational safety expert argues. Measles cases have reached a 27-year high in the U.S. To help prevent transmission, officials need to more closely monitor how and where the cases spread, Christopher Brown, a health scientist in the U.S. Department of Labor's Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), writes in a letter published in the American Journal of Infection Control.

Thailand set to deliver first batch of medical marijuana

Thailand plans to distribute about 10,000 bottles of cannabis oil next week for hospital patients, a government official said on Thursday, the first official use of medical marijuana since a law legalizing it came into effect this year. The Government Pharmaceutical Organization (GPO) will deliver 4,500 5ml bottles of cannabis oil to the Ministry of Public Health to be distributed to hospitals on Aug. 7 for about 4,000 registered patients, GPO executive managing director, Withoon Danwiboon, told a news conference.

Philippines weighs re-use of controversial dengue vaccine

The Philippines is considering re-introducing a dengue vaccine whose use it halted because of links to the deaths of several children, as authorities battle to contain a dengue outbreak that has killed more than 450 people this year. Concerns over dengue immunization for nearly 734,000 children aged nine or older sparked two congressional inquiries, a criminal investigation, and a sharp fall in the number of parents seeking routine vaccinations for their children.

Congo races to contain Ebola after gold miner contaminates several in Goma

Congolese authorities were racing to contain an Ebola epidemic on Thursday, after a gold miner with a large family contaminated several people in the east's main city of Goma before dying of the hemorrhagic fever, officials said. The government's Ebola response coordinator Jean-Jacques Muyembe said an estimated half of cases of Ebola - which has killed at least 1,800 since the outbreak started a year ago - were going unidentified.

African swine fever hits sixth pig farm in Bulgaria

Bulgaria's veterinary authorities said on Friday they would cull 8,253 pigs after detecting an outbreak of African swine fever at a breeding farm in the northeast of the country, the sixth industrial farm in the Balkan nation to be hit by the virus. The outbreak was detected at a farm in the village of Vetren, near the Danube town of Silistra. More than 120,000 pigs have been killed on another five farms in the past two weeks.

Bulgaria to compensate owners who cull pigs to help stamp out swine fever

Bulgarian Prime Minister Boyko Borissov said the Balkan state's government will compensate owners who voluntarily cull their domestic pigs, as the country works to stamp out an outbreak of the highly contagious African swine fever. Almost 130,000 pigs have been killed in six breeding farms in the Black Sea country in the past two weeks. Authorities have so far detected 30 incidents of the incurable disease, which is deadly to pigs but harmless to humans, at industrial or backyard farms.

More than 1 in 10 U.S. elderly are binge drinkers

Binge drinking, often associated with young adults, isn't as rare as some might think among older Americans, a recent U.S. study suggests. Almost 11% of adults aged 65 and older reported binge drinking – having more than five drinks for men and four for women – at least once in the past month, in a nationally representative survey of 10,927 people in 2015-2017.

U.S. FDA approves Daiichi Sankyo's treatment for rare joint tumor

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration on Friday approved Daiichi Sankyo Co Ltd's treatment for adult patients with a type of rare, non-cancerous tumor affecting joints and limbs. The label for the treatment, Turalio, includes a boxed warning flagging the risk of serious and potentially fatal liver injury.

Bangladesh struggles with the worst outbreak of dengue fever

Bangladesh is grappling with its worst outbreak of dengue fever, with hospitals packed with patients as the disease spreads rapidly in the densely-populated country. At least 14 people have died and more than 17,000 have come down with the virus so far this year, according to official figures, making it the deadliest year since the first recorded epidemic in 2000.

Yellow lens glasses don't improve drivers' night vision

Touted to improve nighttime eyesight, yellow lens glasses don't help drivers see better and may, in fact, worsen vision, a new study suggests. Researchers found that yellow-lens wearing volunteers operating a driving simulator were no better at spotting a pedestrian when confronting oncoming headlights than those who wore clear lenses, according to the study published in JAMA Ophthalmology. And there was a suggestion that the yellow tinted lenses might even be making the situation worse.

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(This story has not been edited by Devdiscourse staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)