Health
A Woman's Skin Whitening Cream Gave Her Mercury Poisoning – Gizmodo
A woman’s years-long beauty regimen caused severe mercury poisoning and irreversible neurological damage, say her doctors in a recent case report published by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention this month.
The 47-year woman’s ordeal was detailed in the CDC’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, a clearing house for public health information collected by the CDC from state health departments and local doctors.
According to the report, the Sacramento, California resident sought medical care earlier this July when her arms developed involuntary muscle spasms and became extremely weak. Over the next two weeks, she deteriorated further and was unable to walk, speak and see normally, which led to her hospitalization. In the hospital, she experienced delirium, a state of serious mental confusion.
Two weeks into her hospitalization, blood test results showed that she had incredibly high mercury levels. Her blood contained more than 1,000 times the level of mercury compared to the average person. Interviews with her family soon after revealed that the Mexican American woman had been using skin whitening creams brought back from Mexico for at least seven years.
Mercury has long been popular as an ingredient in whitening creams because it can stop skin cells from producing melanin. But its toxicity eventually led countries across the world to ban or strictly restrict its use in cosmetic products, including the U.S. Yet companies in Mexico as well as many other countries still routinely add mercury to their skin creams.
The woman’s ordeal was all the more tragic, however, because her cream was found to have organic mercury, rather than the inorganic mercury typically added to these products. Organic mercury is more toxic to the human body in smaller doses, especially to the brain, and victims are much less likely to recover once neurological symptoms have appeared. These symptoms, as in the woman’s case, can take months to years of exposure to manifest.
That isn’t to say skin care products made with inorganic mercury are safe either. They’ve been linked to kidney damage, skin rashes, scarring, as well as depression and psychosis. But inorganic mercury is easier to clear through chelation therapy, a technique to pull out toxic metals like both organic and inorganic mercury from the body.
In this case, doctors began chelation as soon as they discovered mercury in her blood. But despite prolonged chelation therapy, the authors wrote, the woman hasn’t regained the ability to talk and she is unable to “care for herself, requiring ongoing tube feeding for nutritional support.”
According to the authors, this is the first case of organic mercury poisoning linked to skin whitening creams ever documented, and the first case of poisoning tied to a particular form of organic mercury called methylmercury seen in the U.S. in nearly a half century.
The original source of the organic mercury in the woman’s skin cream is still unknown, the authors wrote, but California health officials are testing samples of other skin whitening creams for mercury. They’re also “investigating the case of a family member with likely exposure but less severe illness.”
Health
Monkeypox call seen as catch-up bid – World – Chinadaily.com.cn – China Daily



US’ health emergency declaration may come too late to halt spread, experts say
The administration of US President Joe Biden on Thursday declared the country’s monkeypox outbreak a public health emergency, but many health experts fear that it may be too late to contain the spread of infections.
Criticism of the White House’s response to the disease outbreak has been building, with experts saying the authorities have been slow off the mark in distributing treatments and vaccines.
The White House’s declaration signals that the monkeypox virus now represents a significant risk to citizens. The Secretary of Health and Human Services, Xavier Becerra, is considering a second declaration that would empower federal officials to expedite medical countermeasures, such as other potential treatments and vaccines, without going through comprehensive federal reviews.
That also would allow for greater flexibility in how the current supply of vaccines is administered, Becerra said.
Some 6,600 monkeypox infections have been reported in the United States, a number that has risen sharply over the past weeks.
Lawrence Gostin, a public health law expert at Georgetown University, said the declaration of the health emergency “signals the US government’s seriousness and purpose, and sounds a global alarm”. But he told The Associated Press that the action was overdue.
Gostin said the government has been too cautious and should have declared a nationwide emergency earlier.
On July 23, the World Health Organization declared a global health emergency over the outbreak, with cases in more than 70 countries.
California, Illinois and New York have all made declarations recently, as have New York City, San Francisco and San Diego County.
Since doctors diagnosed the first US case on May 27, the virus has been spreading rapidly in the country, with the highest rates per capita reported in Washington, New York and Georgia.
More than 99 percent of the infections are among men who have sex with men.
The virus is transmitted mostly during close physical contact. So far, no deaths from the disease have been reported in the US.
The country now has the highest case count among nonendemic countries, and the number is expected to rise as surveillance and testing improve.
Monkeypox is endemic in parts of Africa, where people have been infected through bites from rodents or small animals. Classification as endemic means a disease has a constant presence in a population but is not affecting an alarmingly large number of people, as typically seen in a pandemic.
‘Rarely fatal’
On its website, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says of the virus: “Monkeypox virus is part of the same family of viruses as variola virus, the virus that causes smallpox. Monkeypox symptoms are similar to smallpox symptoms, but milder, and monkeypox is rarely fatal. Monkeypox is not related to chickenpox.”
There is increasing concern that the US may have lost its chance to contain the monkeypox virus. Some public health experts have pointed fingers at the administration for its slowness in rolling out vaccines and treatments.
“The window for containing monkeypox is rapidly closing,” Gostin warned in an interview with CNN late last month. He had called for the US to declare a national public health emergency and make more vaccine doses available.
“I do think it’s still possible to contain, but it’s also equally possible that this may become endemic in the United States,” he said.
Supplies of a monkeypox vaccine called Jynneos have been limited even as demand surges. The administration has been criticized for moving too slowly to expand the number of doses.
Federal officials have identified about 1.6 million people as being at the highest risk for monkeypox, but the US has received enough Jynneos doses to fully cover only about 550,000 people.
The shortage of vaccines was caused in part because the Department of Health and Human Services failed early on to ask that bulk stocks of the vaccine it already owned be bottled for distribution, reported The New York Times, citing multiple unnamed administration officials familiar with the matter.
The government is now distributing about 1.1 million vaccine doses, less than a third of the 3.5 million that health officials now estimate are needed to fight the outbreak. It does not expect the next delivery, of 500,000 doses, until October.
Health
Monkeypox call seen as catch-up bid – Chinadaily.com.cn – China Daily



US’ health emergency declaration may come too late to halt spread, experts say
The administration of US President Joe Biden on Thursday declared the country’s monkeypox outbreak a public health emergency, but many health experts fear that it may be too late to contain the spread of infections.
Criticism of the White House’s response to the disease outbreak has been building, with experts saying the authorities have been slow off the mark in distributing treatments and vaccines.
The White House’s declaration signals that the monkeypox virus now represents a significant risk to citizens. The Secretary of Health and Human Services, Xavier Becerra, is considering a second declaration that would empower federal officials to expedite medical countermeasures, such as other potential treatments and vaccines, without going through comprehensive federal reviews.
That also would allow for greater flexibility in how the current supply of vaccines is administered, Becerra said.
Some 6,600 monkeypox infections have been reported in the United States, a number that has risen sharply over the past weeks.
Lawrence Gostin, a public health law expert at Georgetown University, said the declaration of the health emergency “signals the US government’s seriousness and purpose, and sounds a global alarm”. But he told The Associated Press that the action was overdue.
Gostin said the government has been too cautious and should have declared a nationwide emergency earlier.
On July 23, the World Health Organization declared a global health emergency over the outbreak, with cases in more than 70 countries.
California, Illinois and New York have all made declarations recently, as have New York City, San Francisco and San Diego County.
Since doctors diagnosed the first US case on May 27, the virus has been spreading rapidly in the country, with the highest rates per capita reported in Washington, New York and Georgia.
More than 99 percent of the infections are among men who have sex with men.
The virus is transmitted mostly during close physical contact. So far, no deaths from the disease have been reported in the US.
The country now has the highest case count among nonendemic countries, and the number is expected to rise as surveillance and testing improve.
Monkeypox is endemic in parts of Africa, where people have been infected through bites from rodents or small animals. Classification as endemic means a disease has a constant presence in a population but is not affecting an alarmingly large number of people, as typically seen in a pandemic.
‘Rarely fatal’
On its website, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says of the virus: “Monkeypox virus is part of the same family of viruses as variola virus, the virus that causes smallpox. Monkeypox symptoms are similar to smallpox symptoms, but milder, and monkeypox is rarely fatal. Monkeypox is not related to chickenpox.”
There is increasing concern that the US may have lost its chance to contain the monkeypox virus. Some public health experts have pointed fingers at the administration for its slowness in rolling out vaccines and treatments.
“The window for containing monkeypox is rapidly closing,” Gostin warned in an interview with CNN late last month. He had called for the US to declare a national public health emergency and make more vaccine doses available.
“I do think it’s still possible to contain, but it’s also equally possible that this may become endemic in the United States,” he said.
Supplies of a monkeypox vaccine called Jynneos have been limited even as demand surges. The administration has been criticized for moving too slowly to expand the number of doses.
Federal officials have identified about 1.6 million people as being at the highest risk for monkeypox, but the US has received enough Jynneos doses to fully cover only about 550,000 people.
The shortage of vaccines was caused in part because the Department of Health and Human Services failed early on to ask that bulk stocks of the vaccine it already owned be bottled for distribution, reported The New York Times, citing multiple unnamed administration officials familiar with the matter.
The government is now distributing about 1.1 million vaccine doses, less than a third of the 3.5 million that health officials now estimate are needed to fight the outbreak. It does not expect the next delivery, of 500,000 doses, until October.
Health
Health unit to host monkeypox clinic Sunday – BlackburnNews.com


Health unit to host monkeypox clinic Sunday
File photo courtesy of © Can Stock Photo / jbruiz
August 6, 2022 6:00am
The Windsor-Essex County Health Unit is making a limited supply of the monkeypox vaccine available.
The health unit will set up a monkeypox vaccine clinic on Sunday from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. at Windsor-Essex PrideFest, centred at Lanspeary Park. Acting Medical Officer of Health Doctor Shanker Nesathurai said the clinic will be geared toward high-risk individuals.
“The term is sometimes described as ‘pre-exposure prophylaxis’, and that will be offered at the Pride event this coming weekend,” Nesathurai said during a media briefing Friday morning.
Chief Nursing Officer Felicia Lawal said the health unit will work with PrideFest and Pozitive Pathways to operate the mobile clinic.
“Public health nurses will be available to provide health information and resources on monkeypox, as well as pre-exposure vaccination for those who meet criteria and qualify,” said Lawal.
Nesathurai said the health unit will have about a hundred doses available at the clinic, and that the unit had distributed monkeypox vaccines in the past.
The health unit also emphasized that even though the biggest risk group continues to be men who have sex with men, anyone can get the virus, which can be transmitted through close contact. Nesathurai added that the PrideFest clinic will be the best way to raise as much awareness of the virus as possible, but the health unit is working not to stigmatize any segment of the population.
So far, there has been just one confirmed case of monkeypox in Windsor-Essex.
Complete information about monkeypox and vaccines can be found on the health unit’s official website.
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