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    F.D.A. Approves First At-Home Alternative to the Pap Smear

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    The tool will allow women to screen for HPV, which causes almost all cases of cervical cancer, without visiting a doctor.The Food and Drug Administration approved the United States’ first at-home cervical cancer screening tool on Friday, a decision that stands to give women an accessible alternative to Pap smears, which many find painful or traumatic.The new test, made by Teal Health, involves swabbing the vagina with a spongelike tool rather than inserting a speculum and scraping cells from the cervix, as doctors do in Pap smears.Similar vaginal tests were approved last year for use in medical offices. But the at-home version could help women who have trouble finding, traveling to or making time for an in-person appointment.The approval is a result of a process that began with the discovery decades ago that the human papillomavirus, commonly known as HPV, causes almost all cervical cancer cases, and that people who don’t have the virus are at virtually no risk.Armed with that information, many doctors started testing Pap smear samples for HPV in addition to analyzing cervical cells under a microscope. Some medical authorities shifted to recommend HPV testing as the primary screening method, which opened the door for vaginal tests, because the virus can be detected in vaginal as well as cervical cells.Cervical cancer experts told The New York Times that the evidence for at-home testing was strong, and studies show it to be about as accurate as Pap smears.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      A. Cornelius Baker, Champion of H.I.V. Testing, Dies at 63

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      Working inside the government and out, he lobbied to improve the lives of people with H.I.V. and AIDS, particularly those who belonged to minority groups.A. Cornelius Baker, who spent nearly 40 years working with urgency and compassion to improve the lives of people with H.I.V. and AIDS by promoting testing, securing federal funding for research and pushing for a vaccine, died on Nov. 8 at his home in Washington. He was 63.Gregory Nevins, his companion, said the cause was hypertensive atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease.Mr. Baker — who was gay and who tested positive for H.I.V. — became active in Washington in the 1980s, during the early years of the AIDS epidemic. He soon distinguished himself as an eloquent voice for people with H.I.V. and AIDS. A policy wonk and health-care expert, he held positions in the federal government and with nonprofits, including serving as the head of a clinic for the L.G.B.T.Q. community.“He was very kind, very embracing and inclusive — his circles, both professionally and personal, were the most diverse I’ve ever seen, which was driven by his Christian values,” said Douglas M. Brooks, a director of the Office of National AIDS Policy during the Obama administration. “His ferocity appeared when people were marginalized, othered or forgotten.”In 1995, as the executive director of the National Association of People with AIDS, he helped establish June 27 as National H.I.V. Testing Day. “This effort was designed to help reduce the stigma of H.I.V. testing and to normalize it as a component of regular health screening,” Mr. Baker wrote in 2012 on the website of FHI 360, a global health organization for which he served as technical adviser.As an adviser to the National Black Gay Men’s Advocacy Coalition from 2006 to 2014, Mr. Baker worked with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Institutes of Health to help fund research for the care of Black gay men with H.I.V. and AIDS.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      How Older Daters are Coping With the Surge in S.T.I.s

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      Older daters are not getting adequate screening and protection from S.T.I.s. Here’s how to be a safer sexually active senior.Since her marriage of more than 20 years ended in divorce, Amy, a 62-year-old Texan, has had a couple of committed relationships and a handful of sexual partners.Amy is currently seeing a man she described as a “friend with benefits,” but it’s nothing she takes too seriously. What she does take seriously is talking to him — and every partner — about safe sex practices amid rising rates of sexually transmitted infections in seniors.“I’m very aware of it,” said Amy, who asked to use only her middle name to protect her privacy. “I require proof of negative testing before I become intimate with anyone.” She also insists on using a condom.Between 2012 and 2022, rates of syphilis, gonorrhea and chlamydia more than doubled among those 55 and older, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Research suggests many older people are unaware of these risks, and that’s keeping them from adequate screening and practicing safer sex.Joan Price, a sex educator who focuses on senior sexuality and who is the author of “Naked at Our Age: Talking Out Loud about Senior Sex,” said she was struck by the variety of reasons older daters may not practice safe sex, or even talk about it with partners.She often hears some version of, “Oh, I can’t get pregnant,” she said, or “Our age group doesn’t get S.T.I.s.” Men have told her they were reluctant to talk about barrier methods of protection because their erections were unpredictable, and using a condom made them go away.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Millions of Girls in Africa Will Miss HPV Shots After Merck Production Problem

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      The company has told countries that it can supply only 18.8 million of the 29.6 million doses it was contracted to deliver this year.Nearly 1.5 million teenage girls in some of the world’s poorest countries will miss the chance to be protected from cervical cancer because the drugmaker Merck has said it will not be able to deliver millions of promised doses of the HPV vaccine this year.Merck has notified Gavi, the international organization that helps low- and middle-income countries deliver lifesaving immunizations, and UNICEF, which procures the vaccines, that it will deliver only 18.8 million of the 29.6 million doses it was contracted to deliver in 2024, Gavi said.That means that more than 10 million girls will not receive their expected HPV shots this year — and 1.5 million of them most likely will never get them because they will be too old to qualify for the vaccine in subsequent years.Patrick Ryan, a spokesman for Merck, said the company “experienced a manufacturing disruption” that required it to hold and reinspect many doses by hand. He declined to give further details about the cause of the delay.“We are acting with urgency and rigor to deploy additional personnel and resources to resolve this matter as soon as possible,” he said.Mr. Ryan said that Merck would deliver the delayed doses in 2025. He also said the company would ship 30 million doses of the vaccine to Gavi-supported countries this year. However, about a third of these are doses that were supposed to have been sent in 2023, leaving Gavi with the 10.7 million dose shortfall.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More