Hospitals and Healthcare

The head of pathology at the Victorian Institute of Forensic Medicine has autopsied dozens of patients with COVID-19. On her table, she says, the signs of the virus are clear.

For more than a month, Samoa has been battling a measles outbreak of huge proportions. Things are very slowly starting to improve.

Instagram will block hashtags spreading "verifiably false" information about vaccinations.

A distrust of elites and expertise is now becoming a public health crisis, says Guardian columnist Gaby Hinsliff

Judge Lawrence Knipel on Thursday refused parents' request to lift the vaccination order that was imposed last week to stem a severe measles outbreak. "A fireman need not obtain the informed consent of the owner before extinguishing a house fire," Knipel wrote in his ruling as quoted by Gothamist. "Vaccination is known to extinguish the fire of contagion."

Fainy Sukenik believes in vaccines, and her four children are up to date on all their shots. That's why she's furious that her baby got measles. Too young to be vaccinated, 8-month-old Shira Goldschmidt developed complications from the virus and had to be hospitalized.

I’m asking parents who doubt the facts to consider how much pain on the face of their child they’d be ready to live with forever

As concern grows about the spread of COVID vaccine misinformation, experts are calling for a new approach: inoculating people against misinformation by exposing them to the common tricks and strategies of persuasion.

Do not demonise. To optimise the vaccine rollout, all of us must show respect to those who are unsure about inoculations, says behavioural strategist Will Hanmer-Lloyd

Back when he was a boy in the 50's, writes Charles McNair, there was a similarly terrifying disease afoot in the US: polio. It came "with a thunderclap of fear," it's other name infantile paralysis, led to lockdowns -- as with coronavirus -- and left people with disabilities, sometimes sending them into iron lungs to breathe. And worse. Then ... a vaccine.

When the virus arrived on its shores, the Pacific island nation was grievously unprepared. It had left the door to contagion wide open, and thousands of children have suffered.

No child should die of measles, whether in Australia, the Democratic Republic of Congo or elsewhere

The campaign will use the hashtag to promote a new global drive about the safety of vaccines, which UNICEF says save 3 million lives annually.