Health News Roundup: WHO sounds alarm on Ebola due to Congo insecurity; Pakistan grapples with drug-resistant typhoid outbreak

Following is a summary of current health news briefs.

AstraZeneca shares rise on early U.S. approval for leukemia drug

AstraZeneca shares rose 2.7% on Friday after the British drugmaker won earlier-than-expected U.S. regulatory approval for a leukemia drug, in a challenge to rival AbbVie . AstraZeneca said late on Thursday that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) had given its go ahead for the company's Calquence drug to treat chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL), one of the most common types of leukemia in adults.

Pakistan grapples with drug-resistant typhoid outbreak

Early this year Muhammad Haider Sajjad, a thin bespectacled boy of 15, was hospitalized in Karachi, Pakistan's commercial capital. Doctors suspected typhoid, but when the most common antibiotics failed to work, the boy's family began to panic.

Trump says he will allow states to import prescription drugs to lower costs

U.S. President Donald Trump said on Friday he will soon release a plan to let Florida and other states import prescription medicines to combat high drug prices, and he blasted the Democrat-led House for not going far enough in a drug-pricing bill. "We will soon be putting more options on the table," Trump wrote in a series of tweets, adding that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi "and her Do Nothing Democrats drug pricing bill doesn’t do the trick."

Roche says Tecentriq cocktail helps liver cancer patients live longer

Swiss drugmaker Roche on Friday said its immunotherapy Tecentriq combined with its Avastin medicine helped people with the most common form of liver cancer to live longer than with an older drug from Germany's Bayer. Median overall survival for patients with unresectable hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC), or that which cannot be surgically removed, getting Tecentriq and Avastin had not been reached but exceeded the 13.2 months of those on Bayer's drug, sorafenib, Roche said.

French doctor still treating patients at 98

When French doctor Christian Chenay saw his first patients in 1951, penicillin was state of the art. Now 98 years old, he is still working and opens his surgery in the Paris suburbs two mornings a week for patients, some of whom he has treated for decades.

Poor hand hygiene may be biggest transmitter of superbug E.coli

(Reuters Health) - One of the best ways to cut down on antibiotic-resistant E. coli infections would be making sure that everyone washes their hands after using the toilet, a UK study suggests. Outbreaks of E. coli - a potentially fatal illness - are commonly blamed on undercooked meat or raw vegetables, but when researchers did a genetic analysis of thousands of samples, they found that most E. coli infections in the UK were caused by a strain often found in the human gut and in sewage, but not seen much in the food supply.

Bayer's Monsanto pleads guilty to illegal Hawaii pesticide spraying

Monsanto pleaded guilty to spraying a banned pesticide on the Hawaiian island of Maui, and agreed to pay $10.2 million in criminal fines and other payments for the spraying and for illegally storing hazardous waste, U.S. prosecutors said. The Department of Justice said late Thursday that Monsanto sprayed Penncap-M, which contained the banned pesticide methyl parathion, on research crops in 2014, despite knowing that the Environmental Protection Agency prohibited its use after 2013.

WHO sounds alarm on Ebola due to Congo insecurity

About 360 people are at potential risk of Ebola after contact with an infected person in eastern Congo yet many of them are out of reach due to clashes and insecurity, the World Health Organization said on Friday. Dr Michael Ryan, executive director of the WHO Health Emergencies Programme, urged the government and all sides to enable aid workers to access several areas where the deadly virus may be spreading.

Ban on flavored vapes could lead to loss of 150,000 jobs, $8.4 billion sales hit: report

A potential U.S. ban on e-cigarette flavors could result in a loss of more than 150,000 jobs and a direct sales hit of $8.4 billion, according to a report released on Friday by a vaping industry trade group. Two months ago President Donald Trump's administration announced a sweeping plan to ban all e-cigarette and vaping flavors except tobacco, but a final decision has not been made.

Trump says ban of e-cigarette products could lead to illegal sales

U.S. President Donald Trump on Friday expressed concern over a possible ban of some vaping products, saying outlawing the popular products would lead to people obtaining them illegally. Trump made the comments during a listening session with what the White House had described as a range of groups, including industry and public health representatives.

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