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Daily Mail
2 hours ago
- Daily Mail
Urgent warning for residents in the Northern Territory as cases of sexually transmitted infection explode
Medical experts are warning residents in the Northern Territory to get tested for syphilis following an explosion in cases of the potentially deadly infection. The NT has recorded more than 183 cases of syphilis so far this year, following back-to-back near-record months since an outbreak began in 2013. Consistently high case numbers prompted the territory's top medical officer to establish a dedicated response team, the syphilis Incident Management Team (IMT) in February. Syphilis can be particularly devastating for pregnant women, leading to miscarriage, stillbirth, neonatal death, low birth weight and congenital syphilis. Australian Medical Association NT president Dr John Zorbas acknowledged the numbers were high, but suggested better testing could be contributing to the spike. 'Sometimes a large increase in case numbers is a good thing,' he told NT News. 'That means we're doing more testing, we're finding these cases and we're actually getting those cases treated.' Of the 183 cases identified in the NT from January 1 to June 22, 93 per cent of cases were successfully treated, a government spokesperson told the publication. Syphilis is a sexually-transmissible infection (STI) usually caused by having vaginal, oral or anal sex with an infected person, through pregnancy and, in rare cases, through skin-to-skin contact. While it is easy to cure if found early, it can cause serious illness, disability and even death if left untreated. The IMT advised pregnant women to test five times across the course of a pregnancy - at the outset, at 28 weeks, at 36 weeks, at birth and six weeks after birth. It also recommended testing for all people aged 15 years and older presenting to any health service including primary health care and emergency departments. Common symptoms include sores or ulcers in the genital areas, anus, cervix or mouth, rash, skin lesions, swollen lymph glands, fever, patchy hair loss, muscle and joint aches, headaches, tiredness and warty lumps. Not all patients will present with symptoms, however, meaning regular testing is crucial to ensure the disease does not cause long-term damage. Syphilis can spread to the nervous system, known as neurosyphilis, which can lead to headaches, altered behaviour, difficulty coordinating muscle movements, paralysis, numbness and even dementia. It can also spread to the eye, known as ocular syphilis, which can cause vision loss, blurred vision, eye pain, eye redness and even permanent blindness. Syphilis was almost entirely eradicated in Australia by the early 2000s but cases have exploded following an outbreak in north-west Queensland in 2011. Since then, the disease has spread nationwide with outbreaks currently active in Queensland, the Northern Territory, Western Australia and South Australia. Case numbers across the country increased 400 per cent between 2011 and 2023, with a disproportionate impact on Indigenous Australian communities. The NT has been hit hardest by the outbreak, with its per capita rate more than five times higher than any other jurisdiction at its peak in 2018. To avoid contracting syphilis, the Department of Health recommends people should get tested regularly and avoid sexual activity while unwell. It also recommends using condoms with condom-safe lubricants during vaginal and anal sex and dental dams during oral sex. You should see your doctor or visit a family planning clinic or sexual health clinic if you are concerned you or anyone you have had sexual contact with has syphilis.
Daily Mail
3 hours ago
- Daily Mail
BREAKING NEWS Urgent recall for life-saving device over dangerous defect
An entire line of defibrillators has been urgently recalled after issues with the devices' circuits caused some of them to fail. The federal government issued a notice for medical technology firm Stryker's HeartSine samaritan Public Access Defibrillator (PAD) on June 24. 'A manufacturing problem related to a circuit board component may impair the device's ability to function or cause failure,' it said. 'This failure could occur at any point when the device is holding a charge. This may be in preparation to deliver therapy, while delivering a shock, or after shock delivery. 'The device becomes inoperable after the failure occurs.' The notice said the defect was spotted during quality testing, not patient use. The source of the issue was the Pad-Pak, a single-use battery and electrode cartridge containing the battery to power the defibrillator and two electrode pads. Users should check their AED serial number to see if it is affected, noting the devices are part of a subset of HeartSine samaritan PAD Models 350P, 360P, 450P and 500P. The affected devices are part of a subset of serial numbers beginning with 21, 22, 23 or 24, and are then followed by the letter B, D, E, G or H. Stryker said users should continue monitoring their PAD device to ensure the status indicator is flashing green every five to 10 seconds. They should contact Stryker immediately if the status indicator is flashing red, or they can hear continuous beeping or the voice prompt 'Warning, Low Battery'. Alternatively, they should contact the company if no status indicator is displayed. For further information, Stryker can be reached on 02 9170 9131 or through email at
The Guardian
4 hours ago
- The Guardian
Planned Parenthood may not survive the Trump administration
Planned Parenthood, the massive, 108-year-old network of women's and reproductive health clinics that operates almost 600 health centers across the United States, may not survive the Trump administration. Long a hated symbol on the right, and unable to summon enthusiastic support from the left, the medical network has nevertheless remained a symbolic and material cornerstone of women's equality, serving millions of patients – many of them indigent or low-income – each year, and housing one of the biggest feminist and pro-choice lobbying and litigation shops in America, in addition to being one of the nation's largest healthcare providers. Since returning to power in January, the Trump administration has made repeated cuts targeting Planned Parenthood's clinics, excluding the group from the vast Title X family planning program, on the pretext of scurrilous claims that they have violated federal anti-discrimination law by adopting resolutions stressing their 'commitment to Black communities' and by providing medical treatment to undocumented immigrants. Now, the supreme court has struck another blow. Last week, the court ruled that patients cannot sue to challenge their states' exclusion of Planned Parenthood from their Medicaid programs. The ruling threatens to transform the Medicaid program, giving states leeway to ban Medicaid reimbursements to any practice that provides politically disfavored medicine – notably abortion, but potentially also including contraception, IVF, gender-affirming care, or HIV treatment. The court functionally nullifies a clause in the bill that established the Medicaid program, which gives patients the right to seek care from 'any qualified provider' of their choosing. Now, the choice of provider can be dramatically limited by the state on the basis of that provider's political beliefs. The ruling also dramatically weakens section 1983 of the Civil Rights Act of 1871, a landmark Reconstruction-era law that allows for citizens to sue states that deprive them of federally protected rights – raising the troubling prospect that the court will look askance at citizens' ability to enforce their constitutional rights against states that are disdainful of them. In the process, the court provided states with yet another way to choke off Planned Parenthood's funding, and to deprive their residents – particularly women – of the healthcare that they need to live safe, healthy and dignified lives. Many states – most – will now probably proceed to do so. The case, Medina v Planned Parenthood South Atlantic, concerns South Carolina's decision to exclude Planned Parenthood from its Medicaid program. State funding of abortions is not at issue: abortion is banned in South Carolina, and even before it was, the state did not provide Medicaid coverage for abortions out of its state funds. (Federal money is not used to pay for abortions, either: a budget rider known as the Hyde Amendment has prevented federal Medicaid funding from covering abortion care since 1977, in effect prohibiting low-income women from accessing the procedure under their government healthcare plans.) What is at issue, rather, is whether Planned Parenthood, which provides a wide array of services for a disproportionately low-income clientele, can be prohibited from receiving reimbursement for other services that they provide – like pap smears, prenatal care and STD testing. Planned Parenthood challenged their own exclusion by the law in tandem with a Medicaid patient who went to them seeking birth control; because she chose a provider that her state government had a disdain for, she was denied. The suit questioned whether the plaintiffs could sue to enforce the right of patients to choose their own providers. Writing for the court's six-justice majority of Republican-appointed judges, Neil Gorsuch found that they can't. In practice, this decision enables an aggressive expansion of the states' power to put the political preferences of Republican lawmakers between women and gender-nonconforming people and their doctors. Delivered the day after the third anniversary of Dobbs, the decision expands the court's attack on abortion rights by granting states broad latitude to exclude abortion providers from the government subsidy programs that structure much of American healthcare: in practice, this will make abortion provision even more prohibitively expensive and onerous for doctors and practices, and will shutter many clinics. The ruling also comes on the heels of Skrimetti, the court's ruling upholding bans on transition-related healthcare for minors, on the absurd claim that such laws are somehow not sex discrimination. Collectively, the cases illustrate a judicial agenda that is not just vehemently anti-choice, but aggressively gender prescriptive: willing to use the levers of medicine and its regulation to enforce a narrow and regressive vision of gender roles, from identity to sexuality to gestation. The decision comes at a moment when Donald Trump's domestic policy agenda, known humiliatingly as the 'big, beautiful bill,' is working its way through the Senate, which among other things is considering a provision to ban Planned Parenthood from all Medicaid reimbursements nationwide. The organization has said that as a result of the supreme court and Trump administration actions, nearly a third of their clinics – about 200 – may have to close; the group has already decided to close 20 clinics just this year. The result is a de facto ban not just on abortion, but on any healthcare provision by pro-choice providers for vast swaths of American women. One in three women in the US has received services from Planned Parenthood; more than half of American Black women have. When combined with the independent reproductive health clinics that will also be excluded from Medicaid due to their abortion politics, that number rises higher. These Medicaid-enrolled women have now been denied the right to choose a doctor for their most intimate care based on their own comfort and values: instead, they will be forced to choose one based on the whims and bigotries of elected Republicans. In her dissent for the court's three Democratic appointees, Ketanji Brown Jackson wrote that the decision will strip patients 'of a deeply personal freedom: 'the ability to decide who treats us at our most vulnerable''. Instead, those vulnerable patients will probably be pushed, in growing numbers, toward religiously affiliated groups that deceive rather than treat. While abortion-providing medical practices like Planned Parenthood are being pushed out of Medicaid, the program is giving more and more money to crisis pregnancy centers, the Christian fake clinics that lure in frightened women, lie to them about their health, do not provide comprehensive care, and often lack any doctors on staff. These fake clinics, which are lavishly funded and outnumber real reproductive health centers nationwide at a rate of three to one, are not a substitute for real healthcare. But they are a means of restricting women's freedom. For the court, that's good enough. Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist
