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Alaska had a record number of drug-overdose deaths in 2023, with a total that was 44.5% higher than in 2022, the state Department of Health said in a report issued last week. The 2023 drug-overdose toll was 357, a number determined through the department’s data on deaths and diseases, the report said. The Alaska statistics buck a national trend of declining overdose deaths that was reported earlier this year by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Of the few states with increases in overdose deaths from 2022 to 2023, Alaska h...
Alaska had the biggest decline in average life expectancy of all U.S. states in 2021, a year when health outcomes were heavily influenced by the COVID-19 pandemic, according to a recent national report. Alaska’s life expectancy in 2021 was 74.5 years, down from the average of 76.6 years in 2020, according to the report from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Overall, U.S. life expectancy declined by 0.6 years in that time, mostly because of the COVID-19 pandemic and increases in drug overdose deaths and other unintentional i...
More emergency kits to save victims of opioid overdoses are on their way to Alaska schools, in accordance with a new law. It requires schools statewide to have kits on hand, with trained people on site to administer those kits if needed. Although the new law does not go into effect until late November, the state Department of Health has already begun shipping out kits with overdose-reversal medicine and associated gear. The law is the product of House Bill 202, which Gov. Mike Dunleavy signed in late August. As of early last month, about 200 of...
State health officials have recorded 234 cases this year of whooping cough — also known as pertussis — through Sept. 9, more than were reported over the past seven years combined. About three-quarters of this year’s cases came in the past three months. Of the statewide total, SEARHC reports 11 in Southeast from June through early September, Lyndsey Y. Schaefer, communications director for the health care provider, said in an emailed statement Sept. 12. Privacy rules prevent SEARHC from disclosing the communities with whooping cough cases...
More than 130 cases of whooping cough — also known as pertussis — were reported across Alaska in the first seven months of the year, with seven confirmed cases in Southeast in June and July. The statewide case count is five times higher than the number of infections reported in all of 2023, according to an Aug. 5 alert issued by the Alaska Division of Public Health. “Pertussis is a highly contagious respiratory disease that can cause severe coughing fits and difficulty breathing, particularly dangerous for infants, the elderly and those with...
Alaska teens are more likely to be depressed and have suicidal thoughts than were teens a decade ago, and some mental health problems have increased notably among girls, according to results from the state’s most recent Youth Risk Behavior Survey. Administered in 2023 to nearly 1,200 high school students around the state, the survey found numerous negative trends. Of the respondents, 19% reported attempting suicide at least once over the past year, compared to 8.7% in the 2011 Youth Risk Behavior Survey. The number who reported they had c...
Alaska state law requires children to get vaccinated against multiple serious diseases to attend school, but it’s about more than keeping students and their classmates healthy, said the chief medical officer for SEARHC. “You’re protecting your community,” said Juneau-based Dr. Cate Buley, a family medicine practitioner with 21 years of experience at SEARHC. Vaccinations are an effective tool to prevent disease throughout the community, she said. “What we really worry about is our babies and our elders.” With the start of the school year just a...
Alaska firefighting departments will have to stop using fire-suppression foams containing contaminants known as “forever chemicals,” under a law that went into effect July 24. Legislators passed the new law nearly unanimously this spring. It went into effect without Gov. Mike Dunleavy’s signature, an option that governors can choose when they don’t want to veto a bill but also don’t want their name on it. The new law targets per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, known as PFAS. They have qualities making them resistant to fire, water and oil....
The Alaska Division of Public Health is hoping to expand wastewater-monitoring programs that have proved useful in detecting outbreaks of COVID-19 and other respiratory diseases, a recent report said. Testing at Anchorage’s John M. Asplund Wastewater Treatment Facility, the municipality’s main wastewater plant, was able to provide notice of a spike in COVID-19 cases in January 2023, several days ahead of patients’ cases that were confirmed by health laboratories, said a bulletin recently issued by the division’s epidemiology section. The inf...
Gov. Mike Dunleavy on July 11 signed into law a bill originally aimed at curbing the meteoric rise in opioid overdoses in the state, but which turned into comprehensive crime legislation that Alaska lawmakers approved in the final hours of the legislative session. Lawmakers built the wide-ranging law around Dunleavy’s proposal to increase penalties for fentanyl and methamphetamine dealers. The law also directs the state to look into why minority groups are overrepresented in the prison system, creates the crime of assault in front of a child, t...
Alaskans have high rates of chronic health conditions that can lead to death, and they are failing to follow lifestyles that would keep those chronic conditions at bay, according to a newly released state report. Two-thirds of Alaska adults are overweight or obese, nearly a third have high blood pressure and 27% have high cholesterol, according to the state Department of Health’s annual Alaska Chronic Disease Facts report. COVID-19 became the third-leading cause of death for Alaskans in 2021, after cancer and heart disease, and the various c...
There isn’t any proof that fentanyl has made its way to Wrangell, but Police Chief Tom Radke has no doubt that the drug is present in the community. “I’m sure it’s here,” he says. “It would be foolish to say it’s not.” It also would be foolish for people who use illegal drugs to assume fentanyl is not in whatever they are about to use. “It’s in a lot of things people don’t think it’s in,” Radke says. And because the synthetic opioid could be mixed in with other illegal drugs like heroin and methamphetamines — even black-market marijuana — an...
The Wrangell Cooperative Association is taking steps to reduce the harm caused by fentanyl, opiates and other illegal drugs by providing free resources to community members experiencing addiction. As of Sept. 26, fentanyl test strips are available at the WCA office, Irene Ingle Public Library and the upstairs bathroom at the Kadin Building, where the state’s part-time Public Health Office is located. Fentanyl is a synthetic opioid that is 100 times more powerful than morphine, according to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration. Since it i...
The SEARHC Wrangell Medical Center wants to help the community prepare for the respiratory illness season and will offer flu and COVID-19 vaccination clinics this fall and also provide RSV (respiratory syncytial virus) vaccine shots as soon as they become available. Flu shots, including a supply of high-dose vaccines for people 65 and older, will be provided at the annual community flu clinic Saturday, Nov. 4, reported Randi Yancey, medical office coordinator at the SEARHC facility. The clinic will run from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. “Patients can c...
After a period when COVID-19 restrictions halted the spread of other respiratory diseases, Alaska had a big increase in influenza cases last fall and winter, state data shows. The overall influenza case load during the 2022-23 season was much higher than in prior years, reports a new bulletin issued by the epidemiology section of the Alaska Division of Public Health. Most notably, cases spiked much earlier in the season, in November and December, before dropping. There were five influenza deaths over the season, all among adults, according to...
More than 2,000 ticks collected over a decade in Alaska revealed a pattern: New tick species are being introduced to the state, often through dogs traveling from the south. They're joining the handful of tick species endemic to the state, which are usually found on small mammals like rabbits. The results are detailed in a new bulletin released by the Alaska Division of Public Health's Epidemiology Section. While several non-native tick species that can spread disease have been imported to...
In southwestern Alaska’s Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta, which has some of the nation’s worst water and sanitation service and most overcrowded housing, vaccines proved to be valuable safeguards against the worst ravages of the COVID-19 pandemic, according to a new study. The study, by experts from the Yukon-Kuskokwim Health Corp. and the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, tracked COVID cases, hospitalizations and vaccination status of the region’s mostly Yupik residents throughout 2021. It found that vaccination was 92% effec...
Alaska posted the nation’s highest rate of increase in electronic cigarette use by young adults from 2016 to 2021, according to a report tracking patterns in all 50 states. The rate of e-cigarette use by Alaskans in that age group more than tripled, from 4.8% in 2019 — the lowest rate in the nation at the time — to 15.8% in 2021, according to the report. The sponsor of a bill in the Alaska Legislature to impose a tax on e-cigarettes, vape sticks and other electronic smoking devices has said the tax is intended to deter young people from vapin...
Alaska Natives continued to have the world’s highest rates of colorectal cancer as of 2018, and case rates failed to decline significantly for the two decades leading up to that year, according to a newly published study. The study, by experts from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium, compared colorectal cancer rates among Alaska Natives with those of other populations in Alaska, the Lower 48 and other parts of the world. The 2018 colorectal cancer rate for Alaska Natives was 61.9 per 10...
Due to an increase in respiratory disease rates —including COVID-19 — throughout Southeast and in Wrangell, the Wrangell Medical Center has re-implemented a mandatory masking policy for its visitors, patients and staff. “It was in response to what we were seeing as increased respiratory illnesses both in the community and in the region, COVID of course being one of those,” hospital administrator Carly Allen said last week. “We’ve also been following influenza A and B and RSV (respiratory syncytial virus), as well as … other respiratory i...
The past three summers have been lean for Alaska cruise ship tourism, but Wrangell’s 2023 draft cruise schedule shows a substantial gain in traffic compared to the 2019 pre-pandemic season. There are 132 scheduled stops this summer, with a combined maximum passenger capacity of 28,830 — about a 40% increase from the 2022 capacity of 20,088 and a 35% jump from 2019. Before the pandemic shut down the industry, Wrangell’s cruise tourism numbers were on a steady climb, from 5,500 in 2011, 10,000 in 2015 and 15,000 in 2018, according to stati...
As part of its ongoing review and update of the schools’ mitigation plan, the Wrangell School District has dropped the COVID-19 testing requirement for athletes traveling for games. The requirement was dropped at the start of the year. Schools Superintendent Bill Burr announced the decision at the December school board meeting, during review of the plan. Though student-athletes no longer need to test before going out of town for games, the district still encourages it. “We are still doing optional testing at all schools on a request bas...
Though the combined impacts of COVID-19, respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) and influenza have burdened medical facilities nationwide, seasonal flu cases appear to be plateauing in Alaska, though activity remains high. Wrangell has largely managed to avoid the effects of the “tripledemic” predicted by White House COVID-19 Response Coordinator Dr. Ashish Jha. Cases in Alaska started to rise steadily in October and hit pre-pandemic peaks in late November — months before the usual February peak for flu. As of the Dec. 24, the flu activity “is s...
Alaska teens have largely ditched cigarettes over the past two decades, but they have substituted that unhealthy habit with another: vaping. About 25% of surveyed high schoolers reported using electronic cigarettes in the past 30 days, according to the Alaska Tobacco Facts Update, released last month by the Alaska Department of Health. The national rate of teen e-cigarette use, also known as vaping, is even higher, at 33%, the report said. Among Alaska youth, cigarette smoking has declined drastically since the 1990s, from 37% in 1995 to 16%...
Residents are invited to reserve a spot at the Wrangell Medical Center’s COVID-19 booster vaccination clinics planned for Dec. 9 and 16. Though infection rates in Wrangell and across Alaska have declined this fall, health officials are advising that case counts could rise as people spend more time indoors for holiday activities. The first clinic is planned for 3:30 to 4:30 p.m. Dec. 9 for the Pfizer booster. Residents are advised to call 907-874-7000 and reserve an appointment. The third booster shot of the vaccine to help protect against C...
