Health, Health Officials | featured news

For the first time in 45 years, homicide has fallen off the list of the nation's top 15 causes of death, government health officials said Wednesday.

Health officials are concerned about the trend at a time when many infectious diseases are making a comeback.

Virginia health officials say a child has died of a brain infection from a microscopic bug, sometimes called a “brain-eating amoeba,” that lives in stagnant water. State epidemiologist Dr. Keri Hall declined to name the child, but the victim’s mother identified him as 9-year-old Christian Alexander Strickland of Henrico County. The boy died Aug. 5 and Hall received the autopsy results Friday confirming the cause of death as inflammation of the brain and its lining.