Health Highlights: April 24, 2018

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Here are some of the latest health and medical news developments, compiled by the editors of HealthDay:

George H.W. Bush Hospitalized Due to Blood Infection

Former U.S. President George H.W. Bush is being treated for a blood infection in a Houston hospital.

Bush, 93, was admitted Sunday morning to Houston Methodist Hospital after an infection spread to his blood, spokesman Jim McGrath said on Twitter Monday, the Associated Press reported.

The former president and vice president is “responding to treatments and appears to be recovering,” according to McGrath.

On Saturday, Bush attended the funeral of his wife, Barbara, who died at age 92. They were married for 73 years, the longest presidential marriage in U.S. history.

Bush has a form of Parkinson’s disease and uses a wheelchair and electric scooter. In recent years, he has been hospitalized several times for respiratory problems, the AP reported.

McGrath provided no details about Bush’s condition and said further updates would be provided “as events warrant.”

In his eulogy for his mother Saturday, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush said his father was in the hospital at the same time Barbara Bush was in the hospital just before her death. At the time, those hospitalizations were not made public, the AP reported.

“I think Dad got sick on purpose so that he could be with her,” Jeb Bush said.

A year ago, Bush was hospitalized for two weeks due to pneumonia and chronic bronchitis. In January 2017, Bush spent 16 days in hospital for pneumonia. During that hospital stay, he spent time in intensive care and doctors inserted a breathing tube and connected him to a ventilator, the AP reported.

Bush also was hospitalized in 2015 after falling and breaking a bone in his neck, in December 2014 for shortness of breath, and at Christmas 2012 for bronchitis-related cough and other problems.

People in their 90s with Parkinson’s disease can be at higher risk for pneumonia and other infections due to swallowing problems, Dr. David Reuben, professor of geriatric medicine at the UCLA medical school in Los Angeles, told the AP.

“And the stress of losing a loved one can weaken the immune system,” he noted.

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New CDC Director’s Salary Nearly Twice That of Predecessor

The new director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is being paid nearly twice as much as the previous director and much more than other past directors.

Dr. Robert Redfield Jr. is receiving $375,000 a year, compared with the annual salary of $197,300 for Dr. Brenda Fitzgerald, who held the post for six months before resigning in January, the Associated Press reported.

Redfield’s salary is at least $150,000 higher than any other previous CDC director, and he’s making more than his boss, Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar, who earns $199,700 a year, an HHS spokesman said.

Redfield also makes more than National Institutes of Health head Dr. Francis Collins and more than double the $155,500 paid to Food and Drug Administration chief Dr. Scott Gottlieb, the AP reported.

Taking the CDC job meant a large pay cut for Redfield, whose base salary at the University of Maryland about a year ago was about $650,000, publicly available information shows. Last week, the Wall Street Journal reported that Redfield made about $757,000 between January 2017 and March 2018, plus a $70,000 bonus.

While Redfield is a leading HIV researcher, he has no prior experience working in public health or managing a public health agency, the AP reported.

For a person with Redfield’s background, his CDC salary is modest by private industry measures, but high for a government public health position.

“It is an exceptional amount of money for what we’ve seen in the past for (CDC) directors,” Angela Beck, a University of Michigan researcher who studies public health workforce issues, told the AP.

Redfield is being paid under a salary program meant to attract highly-qualified health scientists to government work. The heads of the HHS, NIH and FDA are not eligible for the program, and their salaries are set by law.

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