Healthcare in Africa 'under growing strain' after US withdrawal from aid programs, report warns Accra Reset's report states countries in the region and global south should take greater control of their health development after USAID debacleThe United States' withdrawal from key aid programs has put healthcare in Africa and the Global South "under growing strain" a new report warns.The report says the Trump administration's cuts to programs such as US Agency for International Development (USAID), as well as the Covid-19 pandemic and rising costs of living globally have brought "new urgency" for the need to reform healthcare in the region. Continue reading...
Banished to alien lands: Trump's secret deportation deals After a plane journey in shackles, an Iranian woman found herself in the middle of Africa in a country she did not know existed. She is one of thousands deported from the US on the back of shadowy deals made with dozens of countries. An in-depth investigation reveals the 'show of force' costing American taxpayers millionsNo one would tell the shackled detainees onboard the US immigration plane where they were going. The officers in charge would taunt them when they asked, they said. It was only when the seat-back video screens finally showed a map that the 18 migrants worked it out. Continue reading...
Men deported from US bound and beaten in Equatorial Guinea detention hotel, lawyers say Group trapped at Hotel Bamy after US removal as rights groups sound alarm over poor conditions and violenceTwo men that the Trump administration expelled to Equatorial Guinea were bound, fitted with bags over their heads, beaten and pushed down a flight of stairs, all in plain view of other US deportees, according to witnesses and human rights lawyers.The men - one from Egypt and one from Eritrea - were then taken to a prison. About 30 detainees from the US remain trapped at a hotel in the outskirts of the coastal city of Malabo after being deported from the US. Detainees have said they believe the men were beaten for telling the press and human rights advocates about the poor conditions and violence inside the hotel, and that they are haunted by flashbacks and terrified they will be retaliated against next. Continue reading...
Survivors recount panic and struggle to breathe in Nigerian prison cell where 37 died Police fire teargas as protests break out in city of Minna after deaths of suspected illegal goldminers, many of whom were childrenSurvivors from a prison cell in Nigeria where 37 suspected illegal goldminers died while in the custody of a paramilitary group this week have recounted their panic and struggle for breath, as police on Friday fired teargas at people protesting against the deaths and imposed an overnight curfew in the city of Minna.The victims - many of whom were children - were found dead on Thursday in the cells of the Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps (NSCDC), which had raided suspected illegal goldmines and locked up dozens of miners in the city, the state capital of the mineral-rich state of Niger. Continue reading...
British woman who was kidnapped in Malawi rescued by police after shootout Four of Nusrat Osman's alleged abductors were killed during rescue after she was taken from outside her home last weekA British woman kidnapped in Malawi last week has been rescued by police after a shootout in which four of her alleged abductors were killed.Nusrat Osman was abducted outside her home in the southern city of Blantyre on 11 September at about 12.30pm. Police had offered a reward of 30m Malawi kwacha (£12,950) for information leading to her rescue and the arrest of the perpetrators. Continue reading...
Hurricane Polo, rapidly intensifying from strong El Niño patterns, rages off coast of Mexico Polo, with sustained winds of 165mph, is churning 215 miles south of Zihuatanejo but is unlikely to directly hit MexicoA tropical storm off the south-west coast of Mexico has intensified into a category 5 monster in fewer than 24 hours, fueled by stronger than usual El Niño weather patterns in the Pacific Ocean.Hurricane Polo was sending out maximum sustained winds of 165mph (266km/h) on Tuesday as its center churned about 215 miles (346km) south of the coastal city of Zihuatanejo, in Guerrero state. Continue reading...
UNITED NATIONS, Sept 22 (Reuters) - US President Donald Trump used his UN General Assembly speech on Tuesday to make the case for his war on Iran, arguing he has prevented Tehran from obtaining a nuclear weapon and warning that he could "annihilate the Islamic Republic" if no deal is reached to end the conflict.
While predicting his administration would strike a peace deal with Iran following the November 3 US midterm elections, Trump called on other nations to join America in isolating Iran economically to force it to the negotiating table.
"I have a big decision to make. Will a deal be made with Iran that lets them rebuild and create a far greater country than it ever was before?" Trump said. "Or do I annihilate the Islamic Republic and do it quickly, never giving them a chance to kill and destroy people and countries again?"
He later told reporters at the United Nations that US officials had held a "very good" three-hour meeting with the Iranian delegation on Tuesday. He subsequently appeared to clarify that special envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner had met with mediators rather than Iranian officials directly.
"Steve and Jared had a very productive meeting today with mediators of Iran, merely mediators," he told reporters at the start of a meeting with Gulf leaders at the UN. "Let's see what happens with that."
Since returning to office last year for a second term, Trump has sent waves through the global order, joining Israel to attack Iran, ordering a raid on Venezuela that captured the country's leader, and threatening to seize Greenland.
In a 37-minute speech ahead of a whirlwind diplomatic schedule that included meetings with the leaders of Britain, Ukraine and Japan, Trump laid out his foreign policy vision, arguing that the Iran war had spared the world the threat of a nuclear-armed menace while asserting US dominance in the Western Hemisphere is essential to preventing crises from taking root.
"Our actions in Venezuela are proof that the United States will no longer permit threats to America to gain a foothold anywhere in the Western Hemisphere," Trump said. "While others have spoken of peace, I have made peace."
Outside the UN headquarters, dozens of anti-Iranian-government demonstrators gathered, a few of them holding up signs calling for democracy and decrying dictatorship.
Trump brushed aside suggestions that the midterm elections, in which his Republican Party risks losing control of Congress, could constrain his handling of the war. Some analysts have argued that a Democratic takeover of the legislature would weaken his leverage in the conflict.
"What they don't realize is that I'm not running," Trump said, referring to the leadership in Tehran. "I did that already, and won in a landslide. We won in a giant landslide, and I'll be here for 2-1/2 years."
DIPLOMATIC WHIRLWIND
Taking aim at US neighbors, Trump labeled Mexico "the epicenter of cartel violence," urged its government to "reclaim control of its soil," and said his administration was pursuing "a fundamental change in the situation in Cuba."
Members of the Cuban delegation walked out of the hall as Trump referenced his pressure campaign against the country.
"It's an absolutely failed state, it's failing like never before, and it will fall," said Trump.
Yet Trump's appearance was less dramatic than in 2025, when he used a combative speech to chastise world leaders, warning that some countries were "going to hell," and complained about UN facilities after being briefly stranded on a malfunctioning escalator and suffering an initial teleprompter failure.
Trump renewed his criticism of the UN, highlighting his efforts to cut its bureaucracy, but offered no fresh attacks or indications that the US would leave any additional UN agencies.
Trump spoke less than a week after a UN fact-finding mission said it had reasonable grounds to believe US forces committed war crimes in two strikes on Iran, including one that hit a primary school in the southern city of Minab.
He renewed his criticism of international bodies that could serve as a check on US power, singling out the International Criminal Court and declaring that US military personnel would not be subject to its authority.
"We will never allow US service members or anyone else to be investigated or given show trials by an anti-American tribunal with no jurisdiction over us," he said.
Ahead of a UN Security Council meeting on AI and international security on Wednesday, Trump acknowledged the challenges of the new technology but said, "I'm not going to stifle growth of something that will be bigger than the Industrial Revolution."
The speech kicked off a day of high-level diplomacy at the United Nations, where Trump was due to meet more than a dozen world leaders as wars in the Middle East and Ukraine continued to test his foreign policy agenda.
British Prime Minister Andy Burnham said he had "established a good connection" with Trump in their first-ever meeting, where they discussed trade, Ukraine and the status of the Falkland Islands. Trump called Burnham a "natural business person" after the meeting.
At the press-facing start of their talks, Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi said the meeting would demonstrate the strength of the US-Japan alliance amid a "severe security environment, including in Asia," an apparent nod to China. Trump is due to meet Chinese President Xi Jinping in Washington later this week.
Trump lavished praise on Takaichi, calling her a friend and predicting she would "go down as one of the great prime ministers."
On his meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, Trump told reporters that the two talked about finding a solution to end Russia's war in Ukraine.
(Reporting by Gram Slattery and Humeyra Pamuk; Writing by Nathan Layne; Editing by Don Durfee and Howard Goller)This article originally appeared on Reuters at https://uk.news.yahoo.com/trump-warns-un-speech-could-160836184.html
The fallout from President Trump's decision to ban CNN, MS NOW and Politico reporters from the White House continued this week, with the news organizations filing a federal lawsuit, other outlets dropping their coverage in protest and the administration launching a live YouTube stream branded "TRUMP TV."
In response to the ban, four major TV networks - ABC, CBS, NBC and Fox News - refused to participate in the White House pool, the rotating group of reporters, photographers and videographers that document the president's public events. CNN had been scheduled to serve as the television pool on Monday.
As a result, Trump was largely inaudible during a ribbon-cutting ceremony for the White House's new helipad on Monday, where he gave a brief speech without the microphone that the pool would typically provide.
On Monday night, the White House launched a Trump TV YouTube stream. Branded "TRUMP TV: The Essentials Station," the White House said in its description that it would run videos and highlights of "the Trump Administration's biggest moments all in one place." The first video showed Trump's remarks on July 3 at Mount Rushmore.
The three banned news organizations filed a lawsuit against Trump and three of his top advisers in federal court earlier Monday, demanding that access for their reporters be immediately restored.
"This morning, we notified the government that we are filing a lawsuit today to protect our First Amendment rights and defend the principle that the government does not decide what the press reports or publishes," CNN, MS NOW and Politico said in a joint statement. "Without notice or process, the White House revoked our journalists' credentials because it objected to our reporting. Left unchallenged, this threatens press freedom and the public's right to independent journalism free from government interference."
According to the complaint filed in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., the news outlets allege that Trump and the White House are retaliating against them for coverage they dislike.
"President Trump has said in no uncertain terms that he would prefer only to be covered by news organizations and reporters who praise his administration," the complaint states. "But the Constitution does not allow a president or any other government official to deprive the press of their First Amendment rights and liberty and property interests with no notice or process based solely on his dislike of the content of their reporting."
The organizations argue that their reporters were not afforded due process and are asking a federal judge to quickly rule that Trump's ban is unconstitutional. The filing cites a 1977 ruling by the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, which found that the White House cannot arbitrarily deny a journalist a press pass without due process.
"This ban could not be a more direct assault on the First Amendment nor a more blatant violation of our most fundamental constitutional principles," the filing states.
Trump appeared to respond to the lawsuit in a social media post early Monday.
"The White House is not instituting an assault on the Free Press, something which I cherish. It is instituting an assault on the FAKE NEWS, something that has grown like Cancer in our beloved United States of America," the president wrote on Truth Social. "It is corrupt, purposeful, pervasive, fully coordinated, and totally out of control. It is a threat to our National Security, and must be stopped, NOW!"
A hearing was set for Wednesday. Trump indicated in a follow-up Truth Social post that he would appeal any ruling against him.
The White House released a statement on Monday afternoon, saying that access for journalists is "a privilege - not a right."
"The First Amendment protects their right to publish; it does not entitle them to a hard pass, briefing room seat, or place in the press pool," the statement read. "No President is required to host a hostile operation on the grounds. Access has always been a privilege - and President Trump is applying that rule."
Secretary of State Marco Rubio defended the ban in an appearance on NBC's Today show on Tuesday.
"We're not closing CNN," Rubio said. "There aren't a bunch of police officers or soldiers kicking down the doors of MSNBC or MS NOW, whatever it's called, and arresting people and unplugging it from the grid. They're just not allowed to work from the workspace at the White House."
How the ban unfolded
A view of the White House Briefing Room on Sept. 19.
Graeme Sloan/Getty Images
On Friday afternoon, Trump announced the ban in a Truth Social post, saying it was not prompted by any particular stories but was "a result of their constant 'reporting' FAKE NEWS!"
"It's really just cumulative stories over the last few years. You get sick of it," Trump said at an Oval Office event an hour later while explaining his decision to enact "the ban on the free press."
"There's something wrong with a country that can allow people to write purposely negative stories," the president said. "If they want to write them, that's fine, but I don't have to let them into my, into the people's house."
According to CNN, Trump's close aide Natalie Harp showed him clips of media coverage shortly before he announced the ban.
On Saturday, reporters from CNN, MS NOW and Politico were turned away from the White House by members of the Secret Service and had their credentials - so-called hard passes needed for access - confiscated.
The journalists - CNN's Betsy Klein, MS NOW's Akayla Gardner and Politico's Cheyenne Haslett - are listed as plaintiffs in the court filing.MS NOW's Akayla Gardner, CNN's Betsy Klein and Politico's Cheyenne Haslett are seen near the White House after all were denied entry on Sept. 19.
AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana
The White House Correspondents' Association condemned the move, saying it violates the First Amendment.
"The American people, through a free and independent press, must be able to scrutinize those elected to power, regardless of whether government officials view it favorably," Jacqui Heinrich, Fox News senior White House correspondent and WHCA president, said in a statement. "That's why courts have repeatedly held that once the White House provides access to journalists, it cannot deny that access arbitrarily or based on the content of their reporting."
On Sunday, Trump posted what appeared to be an AI-generated image of trash bags bearing the logos of CNN, MSNBC (MS NOW's former name) and Politico outside the White House.
The three news outlets are longstanding members of the White House press pool that provides rotating coverage of the administration and travels with the president.
The daily guidance issued by the White House for Monday listed no primary TV pool, identifying Hearst and Real America's Voice as the "secondary" TV crews for the president's events in Washington and his scheduled trip to New York City for the United Nations General Assembly.
"You should not be here covering me," Trump said. "You said you weren't going to be covering me."
In a post on X, Collins said she was credentialed by the United Nations to cover the General Assembly.
The president vs. the press
A White House staff member reaches for the microphone held by CNN's Jim Acosta as he questions President Trump during a news conference on Nov. 7, 2018.
Jonathan Ernst/Reuters
U.S. presidents throughout history have complained about negative coverage of their administrations. In 2009, the Obama administration sought to exclude Fox News from a series of interviews with a Treasury Department official in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, but backed down when the other major television networks objected.
During his first term in office, Trump continued the Oval Office's adversarial relationship with the media, referring to the press as "fake news" and the "enemy of the people." It has only escalated in his second.
In 2018, Trump administration officials revoked the press pass of then-CNN White House correspondent Jim Acosta after they said that he had interrupted the president during a news conference. The network sued, and a federal judge ordered Acosta's credentials restored.
A similar situation played out the following year when the White House revoked Playboy correspondent Brian Karem's press pass over a verbal argument between Karem and Sebastian Gorka, a former White House aide, at a Rose Garden event. A federal judge ordered the White House to restore Karem's pass.
Last year, Trump barred Associated Press journalists from the Oval Office, Air Force One and some official events after the news service declined to refer to the Gulf of Mexico by Trump's preferred name, the Gulf of America. The AP filed suit and the case is ongoing.
In December, the Pentagon announced new restraints on journalists, who were asked to sign a pledge affirming that they would not gather unauthorized information for publication. New organizations refused to sign the pledge, and temporarily lost their credentials. The New York Times filed suit, and in March, a federal judge ruled that the Pentagon restrictions were unconstitutional. The Pentagon restored press credentials to the journalists who refused to sign the pledge, while imposing a new rule that they can only enter the Pentagon with an escort. The Times again filed suit and the case is ongoing.
In his first event without a network TV pool on Monday, Trump unveiled the White House's new helipad before departing for New York. His remarks were nearly inaudible on the White House video feed. Joe Reberkenny, a White House correspondent for the Washington Blade who was serving as the in-town pool reporter, said he couldn't hear Trump "over the sound of the helicopter."This article originally appeared on Yahoo News at https://www.yahoo.com/news/politics/article/trump-tv-launches-after-white-house-bans-cnn-ms-now-and-politico-and-major-networks-halt-video-coverage-in-protest-155420637.html
U.S., Greenland and Denmark sign deal in bid to end Arctic standoff U.S., Greenland and Denmark sign deal in bid to end Arctic standoffBy Gram Slattery and Jacob Gronholt-Pedersen UNITED NATIONS, Sept 22 (Reuters) - US President Donald Trump and the leaders of Greenland and Denmark signed an agreement on Tuesday that permits a larger US military presence on Greenland and may resolve a standoff over the strategically located and mineral-rich island. The agreement, signed during Trump's visit to the UN General Assembly in New York, stops short of Trump's demand that the US annex Greenland as a US territory to head off the growing Arctic presence of Russia and China. But the deal does codify a greater US military presence on the icy territory, an option that emerged as Greenland leaders argued against a complete US takeover. A text of the deal released after the event said the US can establish a "Golden Dome" defense system in Greenland as a shield against ballistic missile threats. The shortest route from Europe to North America runs via the Arctic island, which is the location of the northernmost US military base. In his speech to the assembled world leaders at the UN before the signing ceremony, Trump said the agreement gives the US "permanent control over security and all other needs on that territory." "No US adversary will ever be permitted to establish a military presence in Greenland any more, or make sensitive investments there without our express written approval," Trump said. Trump signed the agreement along with Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen and Greenland Prime Minister Jens-Frederik Nielsen in a trilateral ceremony after Trump gave his UN speech. Frederiksen described the agreement as a deal that can "last forever" and said it underlines the importance of the NATO alliance and respects Greenland's right to self-determination. A STRONG NATO Nielsen emphasized the importance of NATO in the Arctic region. "We believe that it is vital to keep NATO strong, also in the Arctic, where the alliance has a key role to play," he said. At a press conference after the signing, Nielsen said Greenlanders must now go through a process of restoring trust with the US. Trump's threats to take the island by force had strained relations with both Greenland and Denmark. "I believe the crisis is over now, but I don't think the conflict is over in the sense that this agreement could very well be used - if the Americans wish - as a platform to force through further concessions," said Mikkel Vedby Rasmussen, a political science professor at the University of Copenhagen. Greenland, a former colony and now a semi-autonomous territory of the Kingdom of Denmark, sits between the Arctic and North America and holds vast energy resources. The US already operates Pituffik Space Base in remote northwestern Greenland. The deal opens two new military sites: Narsarsuaq, a former Cold War airbase whose population has dwindled to just a few dozen, and Mestersvig, currently used by the Sirius Dog Sled Patrol, a Danish special forces unit. "We will immediately begin the process of developing a large military presence in the appropriate location. We will be building two very major military bases," Trump said in his UN speech. Trump's refusal to rule out military or economic force to acquire Greenland triggered a diplomatic crisis in January within NATO and forced Denmark and the island's government into months of intensive negotiations. The text of the agreement says it amends a 1951 defense treaty that had been the legal basis for the US presence. It adds that Washington may seek further bases in the future, with details decided by mutual agreement. The deal has no end date, grants US aircraft and vessels broad access across Greenland and its territorial waters, and bars non-NATO states from establishing military installations on the island. It also restricts foreign investment, effectively blocking states and investors from countries outside NATO, NATO partners and the European Union from holding control or significant influence in sectors deemed particularly sensitive, including critical infrastructure and resource extraction. The deal, which needs approval by the parliaments of Denmark and Greenland, marks a shift from Trump's earlier ambitions for an outright acquisition of Greenland, an island three times the size of Texas with a population of only 57,000 scattered along its rugged coastline. But it represents the first major increase in US military infrastructure in Greenland since the Cold War, when the US maintained 17 installations and more than 10,000 personnel there. (Reporting by Gram Slattery at the UN and Jacob Gronholt-Pedersen in Copenhagen; additional reporting by Stine Jacobsen; Writing by Steve Holland; Editing by Xevi Fontdegloria, Ross Colvin, Rosalba O'Brien and Nick Zieminski) This article originally appeared on Reuters at https://uk.news.yahoo.com/trump-greenland-denmark-sign-deal-163727098.html
Older women are dying from UTIs. Doctors say a treatment is being missed. Older women are dying from UTIs. Doctors say a treatment is being missed.CANTON, Georgia - A nursing home assistant found Roselin Shankland struggling to breathe as she reached Room 204 on her morning rounds. Shankland's pulse dropped to 34 beats a minute. Her blood pressure collapsed. By the time Shankland reached the hospital the day after Christmas 2023, a urinary tract infection had spread to her bloodstream. Her organs were shutting down. Six hours later, the 78-year-old retired nurse was dead. Her death was the devastating end of a common - and often preventable - health threat facing older women. It also reflected a broader failure to provide menopausal women with a widely recommended treatment that can prevent recurrent urinary tract infections.Menopause increases the risk of UTIs because declining estrogen changes the tissue and bacteria of the vagina and urinary tract, making it easier for harmful bacteria to grow. In older women, those infections are also more likely to spread to the bloodstream, causing sepsis, organ failure and death.Vaginal estrogen, a low-dose treatment applied directly to the vaginal tissue as a cream, tablet or ring, can help restore those protections and prevent recurrent infections. It can cost as little as a few dollars a month. Major medical groups have recommended it for years for menopausal women with recurring UTIs, yet many women are never offered it.Now, a peer-reviewed study of nearly 2 million women with recurrent UTIs provides striking new evidence of its potential benefits. Researchers reviewing medical records from 2017 through 2025 found that women 55 and older who were prescribed vaginal estrogen were about half as likely to be hospitalized with a UTI as those who were not. Their recorded rates of sepsis and death were roughly one-fifth as high.The study was observational, not a randomized clinical trial, so it cannot prove that vaginal estrogen alone produced those differences - or that the medication would have prevented any individual woman's death. But the findings build upon decades of research showing that vaginal estrogen can reduce recurrent UTIs in menopausal women.Despite that evidence, only about 1 in 10 menopausal women covered by Medicare uses vaginal estrogen, according to records reviewed by USA TODAY. The treatment remains underused even as UTIs send older women to hospitals and cost Medicare billions of dollars each year.A misinterpretation of the influential Women's Health Initiative in 2002 prompted the FDA to slap its strongest warning on all estrogen products, including low-dose vaginal estrogen that was never studied in the trial. The sweeping label scared doctors from prescribing medications their patients desperately needed, pushed women off treatment, and contributed to decades of missed opportunities to prevent serious menopause-related health problems for two generations of women we now understand can be fatal. "This one very simple medicine could have saved my mother," Shankland's daughter Lorrie Durbin says. "She spent her life taking care of people. And in the end, no one took care of her. My mother didn't need to die." Now almost one year after the FDA removed the warning label on vaginal estrogen (as well as other estrogen products), its use still isn't widespread. Dr. Barry Zisholtz, the senior advisor to the director of the Centers for Disease Control, spent his career prescribing vaginal estrogen to women at his Atlanta area urology practice. "Every woman in menopause needs vaginal estrogen," Zisholtz told USA TODAY in an exclusive interview. "Vaginal estrogen prevents women from getting UTIs and keeps women from getting sepsis and out of the hospital. It saves lives." USA TODAY interviewed dozens of women who had serious UTIs and their families, physicians and public health officials, and reviewed thousands of pages of these women's medical records to understand this lapse in women's healthcare and what can be done to help more of them. Woman after woman told USA TODAY that physicians never talked to their mothers who had become seriously ill or died about vaginal estrogen, something that would have alleviated their painful UTIs - and ultimately prevented them in the first place. USA TODAY reached out to the FDA for comment. When Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced the removal of the warning in fall, he said: "Today, we are standing up for every woman who has symptoms of menopause and is looking to know her options and receive potentially life-changing treatment. For more than two decades, bad science and bureaucratic inertia have resulted in women and physicians having an incomplete view of HRT. We are returning to evidence-based medicine and giving women control over their health again."
'She was from the generation where you just suffered through it all'
Shankland hit menopause coming off one of the best eras for women's health care. In the 1990s, hormone replacement therapy was one of the most prescribed medications. More women had access to birth control than ever before. And for the first time, women were included in clinical health trials. The first Baby Boomers turned 54 in 2000. And then everything changed. Estrogen use plummeted from 27% of menopausal women in 1999 to 5% in 2020, according to the National Institutes of Health. During a similar period, from 1999 to 2023, women's deaths from sepsis stemming from UTIs nearly tripled for women 45 to 64, according to a USA TODAY analysis of a data from the CDC included in the June 2026 International Journal of Gynecology and Obstetrics. "This was more than women simply suffering from hot flashes because they weren't prescribed estrogen. They were dying," says Dr. Rachel Rubin, a Washington, DC-based urologist and menopause specialist who has studied UTIs and is fellowship trained in sexual medicine. "The lack of implementing guideline-recommended care here is becoming malpractice." Shankland raised two girls as a single mother while working full time as a hospital tech and attending night school to become a registered nurse. She got a job in a Tampa hospital operating room, where Durbin remembers her mother proudly wearing her nurse's uniform - back when it included a starched hat and white pantyhose. She spent most of her career working for Veterans Affairs hospitals. "My mother didn't complain much, but she also was from the generation where you just suffered through it all, sucked it up," Durbin, 59, says. "This was a woman who worked hard, treated everyone with respect and wouldn't question doctors." When Shankland hit menopause, she was part of a generation that wouldn't have asked her doctor for hormone replacement therapy, her daughter says. Neither did most women."Millions of women stopped getting relief from menopausal symptoms and countless more failed to reap the preventative benefits of menopause hormone therapy," says Dr. Mary Claire Haver, an obstetrician and gynecologist and certified menopause provider who wrote "The New Menopause." Decades later, researchers would say the study had overstated the risk of cancer for younger menopausal women, leading to the FDA removing the black box warning in November 2025. Even when groups such as the Menopause Society suggested in 2004 that hormone replacement therapy including vaginal estrogen could be used for serious menopause symptoms, the FDA black box warning kept most women from using it. Shankland and most of her generation complied with the warning and subsequent recommendations from medical groups such as 2005 advice from the AMA Journal of Ethics that women carefully weigh the risks and benefits and that they should use fans or avoid spicy foods that might trigger hot flashes. But there was something doctors had not told them: Menopausal women are at higher risk for urinary tract infections. And as women get older, these infections can become more dangerous -- even deadly. As a urologist and professor in Albany, New York, Dr. Elise De, understood the pain her patients faced from UTIs. She also knew that recurring UTIs often became resistant to antibiotics, and she had seen patients die from sepsis. De led a team of researchers for the June 2026 study in the Urology Journal that became the largest review of its kind. They examined the health records of 1.8 million women with recurring UTIs, and studied the rates of hospital admission, sepsis and death from October 2017 to October 2025. They pulled data from more than 2,070 U.S. hospitals and 47,000 clinics. The study looked at healthy women as well as those with kidney disease, catheters and diabetes. They looked at women in nursing homes and hospitals and those who simply visited their doctors or urgent care centers. They were particularly interested in menopausal women. The difference between women who used vaginal estrogen and those who didn't was striking. In women ages 55 to 69, 1.5% who used vaginal estrogen died versus 7.3% without - almost five times as many. This means vaginal estrogen could have saved the lives of 22,158 women in this age group alone over the eight-year period of the study, according to a USA TODAY analysis of the data. "No matter their health, menopausal women who were prescribed vaginal estrogen fared better than those who didn't in everything we studied," De says. Vaginal estrogen prescriptions in women of any age with recurring UTIs saved lives. Because this wasn't a controlled study but rather a review of existing health data, researchers considered which variables they couldn't measure, such as whether physicians who prescribed vaginal estrogen gave women better care overall. "It's hard to argue with this data," De says. "It's more than an issue of 'You can prescribe vaginal estrogen,' it's a 'You should.' We should have 90% of women 55 and older with UTIs using it." The data, she says, points to a system failure, not a patient one.
Judith Lipton spent an entire Saturday afternoon on the couch of her Bellingham, Washington, home in May 2020 when she would usually be riding horses. By Monday morning, the retired psychiatrist stumbled on words, tried to put milk into the coffee maker, and worried her husband so much he drove her to a hospital. ER doctors quickly recognized Lipton had gone into life-threatening sepsis. It began with a urinary tract infection. She'd had several UTIs earlier that year, and each time doctors prescribed antibiotics. They never talked to her about prevention. Lipton spent five days in intensive care. "I could have died," Lipton, 75, says now from her home near Santa Barbara, California. When she saw a new urologist two years ago, he prescribed vaginal estrogen. She hasn't had a UTI since. "So many of us older ladies don't know about this. We weren't on hormones and no one told us we need this," Lipton says. "I almost died from something that was preventable."
She called her mom. There was no answer.
The week before she planned to visit her in Georgia, Durbin couldn't reach her mom. She called Monday and got no answer. She called the next day and left a voicemail. She texted Shankland's grandson who had spent part of his summer from New York in Georgia with her. He talked to her every other day. "Have you talked to Grandma?" He hadn't. Durbin drove straight to Georgia. Shankland's front door was unlocked. "Mom," she remembers calling. She walked through the first floor yelling and found her mother naked on the bedroom floor. In the emergency room, doctors told Durbin that her mother had a neck fracture and a urinary tract infection. Shankland was given antibiotics. Experts say the ER is where critical decisions can be made to help women with chronic UTIs. UTIs cause some older women to suffer delirium and are often wrongly treated for dementia. Their infections are overlooked. Other times, the delirium from the UTI leads to falls and broken bones. Dr. Jessica Yearwood, an emergency room physician, noticed more menopausal women with UTIs showing up during her nightshift at a Seattle area urgent care. She and other physicians typically sent them home with antibiotics. These same women would return a few weeks later with another infection. Yearwood began asking them one question: Are you taking vaginal estrogen? Each one told her no. Yearwood, who also runs her own menopause practice, saw an opportunity to provide the care she saw lacking from many primary care physicians. Yearwood added a prescription for vaginal estrogen along with antibiotics. "All of these women were saying, 'Wow, no one has talked to me about this before,'" she says. "If I'm in a position to help women who might not be getting help from their regular doctors, I'm going to do it. Why would I miss a chance to help these women?"
'It was going to be just six weeks'
Shankland spent two weeks in the hospital and was moved to a nursing care center November 13, 2023, to regain her strength. Admission paperwork noted Shankland was taking eight medications, including a statin, a capsule for constipation, a pain reliever and folic acid. There was no medication listed for UTI prevention. Her crooked signature at the bottom of her admission form stated she wanted doctors to use life-saving measures to keep her alive.Shankland's Canton home had been her neighborhood's gathering place. It had a basement bar and a game room, and she decorated them with wreathes and Santa figurines at Christmastime. Now she struggled to stand on her own or shower independently. Durbin planned to move her mother down to Tampa with her as Shankland began occupational, physical and speech therapy sessions. She bought a power lift recliner for her mom to watch reruns of game shows like "The Price is Right" with Shankland's younger sister, Mary. They two would laugh and bicker so much that Durbin used to joke that she should set up a camera and stream it as a reality show. Durbin figured the physical therapy would help her mom become strong enough to move home. "It was going to be just six weeks," she says. "The last time I talked to her, I told her, 'I love you. We've got everything ready for you to come home.'"
'The older you get, the more you get lost in the shuffle'
Just two weeks after Shankland moved to the care center, her lab results showed a second UTI. A nurse practitioner prescribed five days of antibiotics, taken twice a day until she finished them Dec. 4. None of Shankland's doctors ever mentioned that she should be on vaginal estrogen, her daughter says. It was never noted in 830 pages of her care center records that USA TODAY reviewed. Even now, menopausal women often are only offered vaginal estrogen if they complain of pain during sex. Up to nine in 10 women develop genitourinary syndrome of menopause, which is a collection of symptoms in a woman's genital tissue and urinary tract caused by low estrogen, according to National Institutes of Health. It leads to incontinence, frequent need to urinate, painful sex and UTIs. All are treated with vaginal estrogen. Vaginal estrogen can be prescribed several ways, including a twice-weekly cream, inserts or a ring that is inserted every few months for women. For many years, clinicians blamed women for their own urinary tract infections. They told them to urinate more frequently, to have better hygiene. They never explained that changes in menopausal women's bodies put them at high risk. Rubin says UTIs increase with age because of a changing anatomy. Estrogen loss thins the vaginal tissue and changes the microbiome, leading to a less acidic environment -- a breeding ground for harmful bacteria that cause UTIs. The loss of estrogen starts up to 10 years before a woman begins menopause and lasts the rest of her life, Rubin says. Systemic estrogen, which menopausal women may be prescribed, often in a patch, can help with bone loss. It does not help prevent UTIs, researchers say. Many medical associations such as the American Urological Association, the Menopause Society and the American College of Obstetricians & Gynecology all recommend vaginal estrogen for menopausal women, especially those with recurring UTIs. But a generation of physicians who attended medical school during the Women's Health Initiative were not trained on hormone replacement therapy. Most doctors - even gynecologists - didn't receive adequate training in menopause, according to a study in the Journal of The Menopause Society. Less than one-third of the almost 100 obstetrics and gynecology residency program directors recently surveyed said they were taught how to treat menopause symptoms during their residencies. In reviewing thousands of pages of hospital and nursing home records from women who died from UTIs that turned to sepsis, USA TODAY found one urologist who prescribed a 92-year-old woman with recurring UTIS cranberry supplements in December 2024 instead of vaginal estrogen. She died one month later from sepsis from a UTI. This education and training gap leaves women without access to experienced menopause providers, a USA TODAY analysis found using data from The Menopause Society. The nonprofit organization provides updated resources and guidelines for health care professionals and certifies providers in menopause care through exams and continuing education. The USA TODAY analysis shows that there is only one provider who specializes in menopause for every 11,000 women 50 and older in the U.S. There are now almost 6,000 certified menopause care professionals in the United States, most of them physicians. That is up from 1,000 nearly a decade ago, but still far below the number needed to treat all patients. Amaia Palma, a Realtor in Miami, says no one ever prescribed her mom vaginal estrogen, despite multiple UTIs that caused her to suffer in the last years of her life before dying from Parkinson's disease in 2025. "She wasn't having sex, so she didn't complain. And they didn't help her," Palma says. Her mother had been on hormone replacement therapy but stopped taking it in 2003 after doctors told her it was no longer safe. Palma, 52, met with five doctors before finding one that would prescribe her hormone replacement therapy, including vaginal estrogen. "I'm just so grateful. I thought I was doomed. I looked at my mom and what she went through, and I didn't want to be like that," she says. "We need to take better care of our mothers."
'She was afraid she was going to die alone'
Durbin's mother would have turned 81 this year. When she's missing her mom, Durbin turns on "MASH," one of her favorite TV shows. They used to watch it together, her mom pointing out when the show portrayed nurses incorrectly. She remembers her mother caring for her husband's ex-wife when she had cancer. "My mom held her hand when she died," Durbin says. She also tries hard to forget the morning after Christmas 2023 when a nurse called to tell her that her mom had been found unconscious and was on the way to the hospital. Shankland was placed on a ventilator. A nurse practitioner called Durbin that afternoon. "I told Lori that (her mother) is very sick and from my perspective, she is terminal," she wrote in Shankland's hospital report. "(Durbin) said her mom would not want to be kept alive like this. Lori asked me to pray with her mom and make sure that she was not alone. Myself and other nursing staff prayed with (Shankland)." Shankland was given morphine. A physician noted the time of death: 3:09 p.m. Durbin hadn't even started driving to Georgia yet. "My fear is that she died thinking no one cared," Durbin said. "She used to tell me was that she was afraid she was going to die alone." Durbin's family has filed a wrongful death lawsuit against the care center. Her lawyer, Michael Hill of Cleveland, Ohio, who specializes in nursing home abuse and neglect, says "vaginal estrogen is the standard of care for these women, and it isn't provided." The company has not returned multiple phone calls and email messages from USA TODAY.
'We need to start treating women like they matter'
Policy changes, such as improving Medicare's prescription coverage, could help more women, says Jennifer Weiss-Wolf, executive director of the Birnbaum Women's Leadership Center at New York University. A three-month supply of generic vaginal estrogen cream through online drug sites, such as Mark Cuban's Cost Plus, costs $13, rings or inserts, however, can cost up to $1,000 every three months, which can exceed many Medicare plans. The FDA says that hormone replacement therapy is approved for menopausal symptoms, such as hot flashes and night sweats, and symptoms due to changes to the vagina, vulva, and urinary tract caused by decreased estrogen. Some are approved for osteoporosis. The FDA has retained a warning for endometrial cancer for systemic estrogen products. It is imperative that women understand vaginal estrogen is safe and necessary, says the CDC's Zisholtz. "For 20 years we've seen commercials for erectile dysfunction and Viagra," he says. "We need to take away the embarrassment when talking about women's health and start saving lives." Zisholtz wants to see nursing homes checking if women are on vaginal estrogen upon admission and starting them on prescriptions. He wants menopausal women who are admitted to the hospital for pneumonia, hip surgery or other reasons to be prescribed vaginal estrogen as part of their discharge protocol. This year's medical school class will be the first to enter without the FDA warning label on estrogen prescriptions. It might take a generation before those changes are implemented. "These women, especially my mom's age, just suffered in silence," Durbin says. "And now it's killing them. We need to start treating women like they matter." In the past weeks, Durbin had been searching through her Tampa home and storage unit for mementos from her mom, something to remind her of the strong woman who raised two girls alone and later cared for her grandson. The one whose biggest lesson from working at the veteran's hospital was to treat everyone as if they were important. Among the items, her Georgia death certificate that states simply: multi-organ failure due to septic shock from a urinary tract infection.She finds an 8-by-10-inch photo from her mom's nursing school graduation. Shankland is wearing her starched cap and pressed white uniform dress, holding a red rose. Durbin smiles. She can still hear her mother telling her how much everyone matters. Laura Trujillo is a national columnist focusing on health and wellness. She is the author of "Stepping Back from the Ledge: A Daughter's Search for Truth and Renewal" and can be reached at ltrujillo@usatoday.com.This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Exclusive: FDA warnings persisted as UTIs turned deadly in menopauseThis article originally appeared on USA TODAY at https://www.usatoday.com/story/life/health-wellness/2026/09/22/menopause-uti-vaginal-estrogen-sepsis/91680008007/
Hundreds sue GLP-1 drug makers over vision loss as companies dispute the claims Hundreds sue GLP-1 drug makers over vision loss as companies dispute the claimsHundreds of consumers are suing the manufacturers of GLP-1 receptor agonists, alleging the medications may increase the risk of a rare form of vision loss.The patients behind the lawsuits allege that the medications caused NAION (nonarteritic anterior ischemic optic neuropathy), according to The Wall Street Journal.NAION is a rare eye condition in which blood flow to the optic nerve is suddenly reduced, leading to sudden vision loss.Popular Glp-1 Weight-loss Drugs Linked To Potentially Deadly Brain DisorderIt is the most common cause of acute optic nerve injury in adults over age 50, according to the American Academy of Ophthalmology and the National Eye Institute, which describes it as an "eye stroke.""The problem with NAION is there's no treatment," Dr. Douglas Lazzaro, an ophthalmologist at NYU Langone Health, told Fox News Digital. "So it can cause some very profound vision loss."Read On The Fox News AppHundreds of consumers are suing the manufacturers of GLP-1 receptor agonists, alleging the medications may increase the risk of a rare form of vision loss.The companies in question, Novo Nordisk (maker of Ozempic and Wegovy) and Eli Lilly (maker of Mounjaro and Zepbound), have disputed the allegations, according to the WSJ report.Popular Erectile Dysfunction Drug Linked To Eye Disease That Can Cause Irreversible Vision LossNovo Nordisk called the lawsuits meritless and pointed to company-funded research finding no increased risk of NAION with its drugs. Eli Lilly said it continues to monitor safety data and maintained that current studies do not prove GLP-1 medications cause the condition.Fox News Digital reached out to the companies requesting comment.Most of the published research to date has examined semaglutide, rather than tirzepatide.In a data analysis of 37 million adults published in JAMA Ophthalmology in 2025, researchers found that people using semaglutide experienced a modest increase in NAION risk compared to people taking SGLT2 inhibitors, another class of diabetes medication.Doctors Reveal Hidden Danger For Some Ozempic, Wegovy Users With Brain DisordersA 2024 Harvard Medical School study, published in the same journal, found that patients with type 2 diabetes who were prescribed semaglutide had approximately a fourfold higher relative risk of developing NAION. The absolute risk remained very low.The authors of both studies noted that the research was observational and could not prove that the medication caused NAION. They emphasized that more evidence is needed.The patients behind the lawsuits allege that the medications caused NAION (nonarteritic anterior ischemic optic neuropathy).The FDA has said it is reviewing available evidence regarding a possible association between semaglutide and NAION. The agency has not concluded that semaglutide causes NAION and has not issued a safety warning for semaglutide medications.The European Medicines Agency concluded there is sufficient evidence of a possible association to recommend adding NAION as a "very rare" adverse reaction to semaglutide product information in Europe.Click Here To Sign Up For Our Health NewsletterLazzaro agreed that "whether or not that's statistically significant is hard to assess, because there were so many variables in this and it's hard to exactly match patients.""But when they removed all of what they felt were confounding variables… how obese were the patients, male versus female, age, hypertension, level of obesity… they did find that there was a higher risk of NAION."NAION typically causes sudden, painless vision loss in one eye, per the AAO. Other symptoms may include blurred or dim vision, loss of peripheral vision or decreased color vision.Symptoms tend to develop first thing in the morning after waking up.As many people taking GLP-1 drugs have diabetes or obesity, some of these underlying risk factors could be factors in vision issues, experts note.The biggest risk factors for the condition include age, diabetes, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, obstructive sleep apnea and smoking. As many people taking GLP-1 drugs have diabetes or obesity, some of these underlying risk factors could be factors in vision issues, experts note.Diabetes itself is a well-established risk factor for NAION, making it difficult for observational studies to separate the effects of the disease from those of the medication, experts have noted.Click Here For More Health StoriesVision loss from NAION is often permanent. While some patients may regain partial vision over time, there is no proven treatment that can reverse the optic nerve damage.The condition is rare, with roughly two to 10 cases per 100,000 people each year, depending on the population studied.Experts emphasize that patients should not stop taking a prescribed GLP-1 medication without first speaking with their healthcare provider.Experts emphasize that patients should not stop taking a prescribed GLP-1 medication without first speaking with their healthcare provider. For many people with diabetes or obesity, the medications' proven benefits may outweigh any potential vision risk.Test Yourself With Our Latest Lifestyle QuizWhen discussing NAION, one important factor is what doctors call a "disc at risk," referring to certain characteristics of the optic disc, or optic nerve."So if I had a patient who had what I would see on exam is a disk at risk, a very compact optic nerve where everything's crowded, I would tell that patient probably to not go on a semaglutide," Lazzaro advised.Click Here To Download The Fox News App"My overall take on the matter is there's probably a slightly increased risk of NAION when using the semaglutides, but I think the health benefits outweigh the risks," he went on. "And unless I have a patient with a disk at risk, I would probably tell them to go on them if they're going to be a lot healthier from an overall standpoint." Original article source:Popular weight-loss drugs face numerous lawsuits over rare 'eye stroke' linked to vision lossThis article originally appeared on Fox News at https://www.foxnews.com/health/popular-weight-loss-drugs-face-lawsuits-rare-eye-stroke-linked-vision-loss
CANTON, Georgia - A nursing home assistant found Roselin Shankland struggling to breathe as she reached Room 204 on her morning rounds. Shankland's pulse dropped to 34 beats a minute. Her blood pressure collapsed. By the time Shankland reached the hospital the day after Christmas 2023, a urinary tract infection had spread to her bloodstream. Her organs were shutting down. Six hours later, the 78-year-old retired nurse was dead. Her death was the devastating end of a common - and often preventable - health threat facing older women. It also reflected a broader failure to provide menopausal women with a widely recommended treatment that can prevent recurrent urinary tract infections.Menopause increases the risk of UTIs because declining estrogen changes the tissue and bacteria of the vagina and urinary tract, making it easier for harmful bacteria to grow. In older women, those infections are also more likely to spread to the bloodstream, causing sepsis, organ failure and death.Vaginal estrogen, a low-dose treatment applied directly to the vaginal tissue as a cream, tablet or ring, can help restore those protections and prevent recurrent infections. It can cost as little as a few dollars a month. Major medical groups have recommended it for years for menopausal women with recurring UTIs, yet many women are never offered it.Now, a peer-reviewed study of nearly 2 million women with recurrent UTIs provides striking new evidence of its potential benefits. Researchers reviewing medical records from 2017 through 2025 found that women 55 and older who were prescribed vaginal estrogen were about half as likely to be hospitalized with a UTI as those who were not. Their recorded rates of sepsis and death were roughly one-fifth as high.The study was observational, not a randomized clinical trial, so it cannot prove that vaginal estrogen alone produced those differences - or that the medication would have prevented any individual woman's death. But the findings build upon decades of research showing that vaginal estrogen can reduce recurrent UTIs in menopausal women.Despite that evidence, only about 1 in 10 menopausal women covered by Medicare uses vaginal estrogen, according to records reviewed by USA TODAY. The treatment remains underused even as UTIs send older women to hospitals and cost Medicare billions of dollars each year.A misinterpretation of the influential Women's Health Initiative in 2002 prompted the FDA to slap its strongest warning on all estrogen products, including low-dose vaginal estrogen that was never studied in the trial. The sweeping label scared doctors from prescribing medications their patients desperately needed, pushed women off treatment, and contributed to decades of missed opportunities to prevent serious menopause-related health problems for two generations of women we now understand can be fatal. "This one very simple medicine could have saved my mother," Shankland's daughter Lorrie Durbin says. "She spent her life taking care of people. And in the end, no one took care of her. My mother didn't need to die." Now almost one year after the 
Woman after woman told USA TODAY that physicians never talked to their mothers who had become seriously ill or died about vaginal estrogen, something that would have alleviated their painful UTIs - and ultimately prevented them in the first place. USA TODAY reached out to the FDA for comment. When Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced the removal of the warning in fall, he said: "Today, we are standing up for every woman who has symptoms of menopause and is looking to know her options and receive potentially life-changing treatment. For more than two decades, bad science and bureaucratic inertia have resulted in women and physicians having an incomplete view of HRT. We are returning to evidence-based medicine and giving women control over their health again."
The first Baby Boomers turned 54 in 2000. And then everything changed. Estrogen use plummeted from 27% of menopausal women in 1999 to 5% in 2020, according to the National Institutes of Health. During a similar period, from 1999 to 2023, women's deaths from sepsis stemming from UTIs nearly tripled for women 45 to 64, according to a USA TODAY analysis of a data from the CDC included in the June 2026 
"This was more than women simply suffering from hot flashes because they weren't prescribed estrogen. They were dying," says 
"My mother didn't complain much, but she also was from the generation where you just suffered through it all, sucked it up," Durbin, 59, says. "This was a woman who worked hard, treated everyone with respect and wouldn't question doctors." When Shankland hit menopause, she was part of a generation that wouldn't have asked her doctor for hormone replacement therapy, her daughter says. Neither did most women."Millions of women stopped getting relief from menopausal symptoms and countless more failed to reap the preventative benefits of menopause hormone therapy," says 
De led a team of researchers for the June 2026 study in the Urology Journal that became the largest review of its kind. They examined the health records of 1.8 million women with recurring UTIs, and studied the rates of hospital admission, sepsis and death from October 2017 to October 2025. They pulled data from more than 2,070 U.S. hospitals and 47,000 clinics. The study looked at healthy women as well as those with kidney disease, catheters and diabetes. They looked at women in nursing homes and hospitals and those who simply visited their doctors or urgent care centers. They were particularly interested in menopausal women. The difference between women who used vaginal estrogen and those who didn't was striking. In women ages 55 to 69, 1.5% who used vaginal estrogen died versus 7.3% without - almost five times as many. This means vaginal estrogen could have saved the lives of 22,158 women in this age group alone over the eight-year period of the study, according to a USA TODAY analysis of the data. "No matter their health, menopausal women who were prescribed vaginal estrogen fared better than those who didn't in everything we studied," De says. Vaginal estrogen prescriptions in women of any age with recurring UTIs saved lives. Because this wasn't a controlled study but rather a review of existing health data, researchers considered which variables they couldn't measure, such as whether physicians who prescribed vaginal estrogen gave women better care overall. "It's hard to argue with this data," De says. "It's more than an issue of 'You can prescribe vaginal estrogen,' it's a 'You should.' We should have 90% of women 55 and older with UTIs using it." The data, she says, points to a system failure, not a patient one. 
By Monday morning, the retired psychiatrist stumbled on words, tried to put milk into the coffee maker, and worried her husband so much he drove her to a hospital. ER doctors quickly recognized Lipton had gone into life-threatening sepsis. It began with a urinary tract infection. She'd had several UTIs earlier that year, and each time doctors prescribed antibiotics. They never talked to her about prevention. Lipton spent five days in intensive care. "I could have died," Lipton, 75, says now from her home near Santa Barbara, California. When she saw a new urologist two years ago, he prescribed vaginal estrogen. She hasn't had a UTI since. "So many of us older ladies don't know about this. We weren't on hormones and no one told us we need this," Lipton says. "I almost died from something that was preventable." 
Durbin planned to move her mother down to Tampa with her as Shankland began occupational, physical and speech therapy sessions. She bought a power lift recliner for her mom to watch reruns of game shows like "The Price is Right" with Shankland's younger sister, Mary. They two would laugh and bicker so much that Durbin used to joke that she should set up a camera and stream it as a reality show. Durbin figured the physical therapy would help her mom become strong enough to move home. "It was going to be just six weeks," she says. "The last time I talked to her, I told her, 'I love you. We've got everything ready for you to come home.'" 
When she's missing her mom, Durbin turns on "MASH," one of her favorite TV shows. They used to watch it together, her mom pointing out when the show portrayed nurses incorrectly. She remembers her mother caring for her husband's ex-wife when she had cancer. "My mom held her hand when she died," Durbin says. She also tries hard to forget the morning after Christmas 2023 when a nurse called to tell her that her mom had been found unconscious and was on the way to the hospital. Shankland was placed on a ventilator. A nurse practitioner called Durbin that afternoon. "I told Lori that (her mother) is very sick and from my perspective, she is terminal," she wrote in Shankland's hospital report. "(Durbin) said her mom would not want to be kept alive like this. Lori asked me to pray with her mom and make sure that she was not alone. Myself and other nursing staff prayed with (Shankland)." Shankland was given morphine. A physician noted the time of death: 3:09 p.m. Durbin hadn't even started driving to Georgia yet. "My fear is that she died thinking no one cared," Durbin said. "She used to tell me was that she was afraid she was going to die alone." Durbin's family has filed a wrongful death lawsuit against the care center. Her lawyer, 
Among the items, her Georgia death certificate that states simply: multi-organ failure due to septic shock from a urinary tract infection.She finds an 8-by-10-inch photo from her mom's nursing school graduation. Shankland is wearing her starched cap and pressed white uniform dress, holding a red rose. Durbin smiles. She can still hear her mother telling her how much everyone matters. Laura Trujillo is a national columnist focusing on health and wellness. She is the author of "Stepping Back from the Ledge: A Daughter's Search for Truth and Renewal" and can be reached at ltrujillo@usatoday.com. This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: 
