A 5-Year-Old Boy Is the First to Die of Ebola in Uganda as Outbreak Crosses Congo Border

(KASINDI, Congo) — A 5-year-old boy vomiting blood became the first cross-border victim of Ebola in the current outbreak on Wednesday, while two more people in Uganda tested positive for the highly contagious disease that has killed nearly 1,400 in Congo. The boy, part of a Congolese family who crossed into Uganda earlier in the … Read more

Facebook Wants Your Blood

Donating blood is a selfless act, and as with many altruistic behaviors, it’s not always easy to convince people to take a couple of hours out of their day to do it. Yet it is desperately required: every day, patients in the U.S. need about 30,000 pints (about 14,200 liters) of blood, and the supply … Read more

New Government Estimates Offer Early Hope That Drug Overdose Deaths Are Waning

After years of sharp increases in fatal drug overdoses in the U.S., provisional federal data provide reason for cautious optimism. The drug overdose death rate dropped slightly between 2017 and 2018, according to the new estimates, after two decades of near-constant upticks. Between 1999 and 2017 the age-adjusted overdose mortality rate increased from 6.1 to … Read more