TB emergency; parents lost to overdose; handwashing for good – Morning Medical Update

Health emergency

The city of Long Beach, California, is in a state of public health emergency due to at least one death and 14 people sick with tuberculosis. A nurse who apparently came down with TB may have exposed more than 350 newborns. ABC News has details.

A lost generation

The opioid crisis has troubled the United States for years, and even if abuse of the drugs stopped today, there will be effects for the lifetimes of children of overdose victims. A new study estimates 321,566 children lost a parent to drug overdose from 2011 to 2021. JAMA Psychiatry and the National Institutes of Health have more.

Healthy happy hands

Hand Hygiene Day officially was May 5, but every day is a good day to put into practice one of the easiest ways to stop the spread of germs. Bradley Company has an annual Health Handwashing Survey and this report from Infection Control Today, a sister publication of Medical Economics, explains the findings.