Health

Five people have now died of Eastern Equine Encephalytis or EEE in Michigan. The illness is spread by mosquitos. The latest victim lived in Cass County.

Lynn Sutfin is with the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services.

She says people should not let down their guard, even though freezing temperatures are forecast for some parts of lower Michigan Monday night.  

The Michigan Department of Health and Human Services announced Friday that an adult man has died from a vaping-related lung injury. It's the first such death to happen in the state.

On Tuesday, the Centers for Disease Control reported a nationwide total of 18 vaping-related deaths and 1,080 cases so far. Those numbers do not include the Michigan death, or any other deaths that have been reported in other states since Tuesday.

State officials have not identified any additional cases of a new virulent strain of Hepatitis A in the past 100 days, since an outbreak began three years ago in Michigan.

The outbreak resulted in 738 people being hospitalized (so far), and 30 deaths (so far).

Going 100 days without a new case is typically the factor leading officials to call an outbreak over.

For the first time since 1980, the state will use aerial pesticide spraying to try to curb the spread of a mosquito-borne virus.

The virus is Eastern Equine Encephalitis (EEE). There have been nine reported human cases in Michigan so far, three of them fatal. There have also been 27 cases reported in animals, all of them fatal.

The state health department is considering the use of pesticides in areas that are affected by Eastern Equine Encephalitis, also known as Triple-E. It's a mosquito-borne virus that can be fatal for people.

The Michigan Department of Health and Human Services has reached out to local health officials in areas affected by the virus.

The federal government is launching a new study to examine the link between drinking water contaminated with industrial chemicals called PFAS and health outcomes.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry announced the start of the health study this week.

The agencies are giving grants to several institutions around the country to study PFAS exposure.

A new Michigan State University study finds a decade of computer hacking has exposed the personal data of nearly 170 million hospital patients.

Researchers from MSU and Johns Hopkins University examined more than 1,400 hospital data breaches between 2009 and 2019. 

The number of cases of suspected respiratory illnesses connected to vaping continues to climb in Michigan.

The Michigan Department of Health and Human Services says there are now a dozen confirmed or probable cases of severe lung disease associated with vaping. The department is investigating another 14 possible cases.

Michigan retailers have two weeks to clear their shelves of flavored, nicotine-laced vaping products. The state health department issued new rules Wednesday that ban the sale of those products. The ban also applies to online retailers who ship vaping products to Michigan customers.

Bob Wheaton is with the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services. He says the rule follows a formal declaration that vaping is a “public health emergency.”

More children in Michigan are getting their hands on marijuana edibles. In 2017, the Michigan Poison Center at Wayne State University reported having six cases of children under six who ate an edible. That number climbed to 46 in 2018. In 2019, the center reports 59 cases of a child under six ingesting an edible, and the year isn’t over yet. These numbers are referring only to edibles with THC ingested by children.

The Michigan Department of Health and Human Services is making a $500,000 grant to expand two pilot projects in northern Michigan.

The program is called the "Behavioral Health Home" initiative. It offers wrap-around services with a team approach to treat both mental and physical health care needs for Medicaid patients with serious mental illness or serious emotional disturbance.

State health officials are launching an investigation into vaping.  They are looking for a possible link to a serious respiratory illnesses.

The Michigan Department of Health and Human Services will receive a $1.66 million federal grant to help fund the Michigan Pediatric Epilepsy Project. The four-year grant from the Health Resources and Services Administration will provide about $416,000 each year to the project, which provides comprehensive care to children with epilepsy in Michigan. The grant is focused in particular on improving health outcomes for pediatric epilepsy patients in rural and underserved areas.

The Michigan Department of Health and Human Services is urging residents to protect themselves from mosquito bites.

That's after cases of Eastern Equine Encephalitis -- or Triple E -- were confirmed in animals in Kalamazoo, St. Joseph and Cass counties.

The disease is transmitted from horses and deer to humans through mosquito bites.

“Use mosquito repellant, maybe even wear some long sleeves if you can,” said MDHHS spokeswoman Lynn Sutfin. “Also, check your doors and your screens. Try and make sure those mosquitos are staying outside of your home.”

A new report finds PFAS contamination in about one in ten public water systems in Michigan.

PFAS compounds (per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances) have been linked to serious health problems.  The chemicals were used in a variety of products, from firefighting foam to food packaging.

New guidelines set by the Michigan Opioid Prescribing Engagement Network (OPEN) and implemented by hospitals around the state have allowed surgeons to reduce the amount of opioids they prescribe to patients post-surgery. Patients didn’t report increased pain; in fact, patients reported the same amount of pain as patients did with more opioids.

Medicaid insurance providers in Michigan cannot refuse benefits for sex reassignment surgeries and hormone replacement medications. The governor’s office recently codified the antidiscrimination language into the state’s Medicaid Provider Manual. It’s already state policy.

Governor Gretchen Whitmer says this puts Michigan in line with federal law.

“Our laws have been inconsistent on the books here in Michigan and we thought it was important to clean it up and make sure that our laws reflected what the mandates of the Affordable Care Act are,” she says.

Gun violence in the United States is a public health problem – and it needs to be treated that way. That’s according to Dr. Rebecca Cunningham, the Director of the Injury Prevention Center at the University of Michigan.

Cunningham said gun violence prevention should be explored in the same way drownings and car crashes are prevented. That means focusing on risk and prevention factors, and applying injury prevention science and tactics. For example, to prevent car crashes, people changed infrastructure and the way cars were made.

State health department officials say the state of Michigan should keep a psychiatric center in the Thumb open, but scrap plans for a major expansion.

The Caro Center has been operating for more than a century in Tuscola County. Hundreds of people are employed at the center which provides psychiatric care to dozens of patients in a collection of aging buildings.

Officials overseeing the former General Motors’ Buick City site in Flint have submitted a plan to the state to expand their investigation of PFAS contamination discharging into the Flint River.

PFAS has been linked to numerous public health issues. 

Several environmental, legal and advocacy groups, including the ACLU of Michigan and Great Lakes Environmental Law Center, have petitioned the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services to intervene in water shutoffs in Detroit, calling them a public health emergency.

ACLU attorney Mark Fancher says more than 112,000 Detroit households had their water shut off at some point between 2014 and 2018.