MELBOURNE (Reuters) – Deaths related to measles, mostly among small children, have more than tripled to 20 in the past week on the Pacific island of Samoa, the government has said eight days after declaring a state of emergency over the outbreak. The island st... More »
BEIJING (Reuters) – China’s Inner Mongolia reported a fresh, confirmed case of bubonic plague on Sunday, despite an earlier declaration by the country’s health officials that the risk of an outbreak was minimal. The health commission of the autonomous region s... More »
MELBOURNE (Reuters) – Samoa declared a state of emergency this weekend, closing all schools and cracking down on public gatherings, after several deaths linked to a measles outbreak that has spread across the Pacific islands. The island state of just 200,000, ... More »
LONDON (Reuters) – Scientists who resurrected a 50,000-year-old gene sequence have analyzed it to figure out how the world’s deadliest malaria parasite jumped from gorillas to humans – giving insight into the origins of one of human history’s biggest killers. ... More »
LONDON (Reuters) – E-cigarette or vaping-linked lung injuries that have killed 29 and sickened more than 1,000 people in the United States are likely to be rare in Britain and other countries where the suspect products are not widely used, specialists said on ... More »
KHARTOUM (Reuters) – There have been five confirmed deaths from cholera in Sudan’s Blue Nile state since Aug. 28, the health ministry said in a statement. The ministry reported 67 cases of cholera since that date, with 18 of them still receiving treatment in i... More »
GOMA, Democratic Republic of Congo (Reuters) – The death toll from Democratic Republic of Congo’s year-long Ebola outbreak has climbed above 2,000, government data showed on Friday, as responders battle to overcome community mistrust and widespread security pr... More »
KAMPALA (Reuters) – A nine-year-old girl has died of Ebola in the East African nation of Uganda, a hospital official said, a day after she tested positive for the disease after crossing the border from neighboring Democratic Republic of Congo. “It is true she ... More »
GOMA (Reuters) – The World Health Organization said it has vaccinated over 1,300 people who potentially came into contact with the Ebola virus in the Congolese city of Goma, helping contain what many feared would be a rapid spread in an urban center. A year-lo... More »
GOMA, Congo (Reuters) – Congolese authorities were racing to contain an Ebola epidemic on Thursday, after a gold miner with a large family contaminated several people in the east’s main city of Goma before dying of the hemorrhagic fever, officials said. The go... More »
GOMA, Congo (Reuters) – The second case of Ebola recorded in east Congo’s main city of Goma had a large family including 10 children and managed to infect several people before dying of the hemorrhagic fever, the government’s Ebola response coordinator said on... More »
GENEVA (Reuters) – Electronic cigarettes and heated tobacco products are not helping fight cancer, the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Friday, urging smokers and governments not to trust claims from cigarette firms about their latest products. The seve... More »
GENEVA (Reuters) – The United States could bolster the battle against the Ebola virus in Democratic Republic of Congo by allowing more of its experts to travel to the outbreak zone, a senior World Health Organization (WHO) official said on Friday. The virus ha... More »
LONDON (Reuters) – Healthy progress has been made in reducing smoking and tobacco use, but governments need to do more to help the world’s 1.1 billion smokers quit, the World Health Organization said on Friday. Tobacco use has also declined proportionately in ... More »
GENEVA (Reuters) – Democratic Republic of Congo’s Ebola outbreak could last much longer and cost far more in money and lives unless U.N. member states inject hundreds of millions of dollars now, U.N. humanitarian chief Mark Lowcock told Reuters on Monday. Spea... More »
GOMA, Democratic Republic of Congo (Reuters) – Unidentified attackers killed two Ebola health workers in eastern Congo over the weekend, the health ministry said, the latest in a string of assaults that have hampered efforts to stop the deadly spread of the vi... More »
GOMA (Reuters) – Unidentified attackers killed two Ebola health workers in eastern Congo over the weekend, the latest in a string of assaults that have hobbled efforts to contain the second largest ever outbreak of the deadly virus, the health ministry said. T... More »
LONDON (Reuters) – A rogue Chinese scientist who caused outrage last year when he said he had created the world’s first “gene-edited” babies in an attempt to protect them from HIV may also have put them at risk with a “foolish” choice of gene, experts said on ... More »
GOMA, Democratic Republic of Congo/GENEVA (Reuters) – The death toll from an Ebola outbreak in Congo rose above 1,000 on Friday, with attacks on treatment centers continuing to hamper efforts to control the “intense transmission” of the second-worst epidemic o... More »
GOMA, Democratic Republic of Congo (Reuters) – The death toll from the Ebola outbreak in Democratic Republic of Congo rose above 1,000 on Friday, as violent attacks on treatment centres hamper efforts to control the second-worst epidemic of the virus on record... More »
LONDON (Reuters) – It would be irresponsible for any scientist to conduct human gene-editing studies in people, and a central registry of research plans should be set up to ensure transparency, World Health Organization experts said on Tuesday. After its first... More »
GENEVA (Reuters) – At least 922 children and young adults have died of measles in Madagascar since October, despite a huge emergency vaccination program, the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Thursday. The number of deaths is based on official numbers, b... More »
GENEVA (Reuters) – Democratic Republic of Congo’s Ebola outbreak has spread southwards into an area with high security risks, the World Health Organization said. The outbreak, the country’s worst, has killed 439 of the 713 people believed to have caught the di... More »
(Reuters) – A U.S. healthcare worker who was being monitored for the Ebola virus after treating patients in the Democratic Republic of Congo was released from a Nebraska hospital on Saturday after doctors said they had seen no signs of the deadly disease. The ... More »
LONDON, Jan 11 (Reuters) – At least $14 billion is needed to accelerate the fight against AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria and quell stubborn epidemics that still kill millions, the head of a global health fund said on Friday. Announcing a fundraising target for... More »
GENEVA (Reuters) – The palm oil industry is deploying tactics similar to those of the alcohol and tobacco industries to influence research into the health effects of its product, a study published by the World Health Organization said on Tuesday. Evidence of t... More »
LONDON, Jan 7 (Reuters) – A leading geneticist who ran the conference where a Chinese scientist said he had made the world’s first “gene-edited” babies condemned him on Monday for potentially jeopardizing lives and having no biology training. Robin Lovell-Badg... More »
LONDON, Dec 4 (Reuters) – A woman in Brazil who received a womb transplanted from a deceased donor has given birth to a baby girl in the first successful case of its kind, doctors reported. The case, published in The Lancet medical journal, involved connecting... More »
MIT NAMA (Reuters) – When Houaida Mabrouk heard about a government campaign that offers free hepatitis C screenings, she hesitated, afraid of testing positive. But after many from her community started visiting health clinics to get checked, she changed her mi... More »
MBANDAKA, Democratic Republic of Congo (Reuters) – Health workers in Democratic Republic of Congo will begin a vaccination campaign on Monday aimed at containing an outbreak of the deadly Ebola virus, a spokeswoman for the health ministry said. Jessica Ilunga ... More »
MBANDAKA, Democratic Republic of Congo (Reuters) – In the city of Mbandaka in northwest Congo, Mbombo Roge does not shake hands with friends anymore: Ebola changed all that. Roge simply bowed when he met a group of friends on Saturday afternoon, obeying one of... More »
GENEVA/KINSHASA (Reuters) – The Ebola outbreak in Democratic Republic of Congo can be brought under control and is not an international public health emergency, experts advising the World Health Organization said on Friday. Earlier in the day the WHO had said ... More »
KINSHASA (Reuters) – Three new cases of Ebola were confirmed in northwest Congo’s regional capital of Mbandaka on Friday, in a part of the city lying next to the Congo River, the health ministry said. The ministry statement late on Friday said the suspected ca... More »
GENEVA (Reuters) – Democratic Republic of Congo reported 39 suspected, probable or confirmed cases of Ebola between April 4 and May 13, including 19 deaths, the World Health Organization said on Monday. It said 393 people who identified as contacts of Ebola pa... More »
GENEVA (Reuters) – The World Health Organization has been given the go-ahead by officials in the Democratic Republic of Congo to import and use an experimental Ebola vaccine in the country, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said on Monday. “We ha... More »
LONDON (Reuters) – Scientists have identified the core genes that are essential for the deadliest malaria parasite to survive, revealing new targets for drugs or vaccines to fight the potentially deadly disease they cause in people. Using new genomic technique... More »
LONDON (Reuters) – International scientists have identified 44 genetic variants that can increase the risk of developing major depression and found that all humans carry at least some of them. The new findings could help explain why not everyone treated with a... More »
LONDON, April 18 (Reuters) – Gene-editing technologies that alter mosquitoes’ DNA could prove critical in the fight against malaria, Bill Gates said on Wednesday, and ethical concerns should not block progress in such gene-modifying research. Speaking at the M... More »
KARACHI, Pakistan (Reuters) – Pakistan launched a nationwide polio vaccination drive this week to reach 38.7 million children and eradicate the paralyzing and potentially deadly virus in one of the last countries where it is endemic. Nearly 260,000 volunteers ... More »
FILE PHOTO: Doctor Katarzyna Koziol injects sperm directly into an egg during in-vitro fertilization (IVF) procedure called Intracytoplasmic Sperm Injection (ICSI) at Novum clinic in Warsaw, Poland October 26, 2010. REUTERS/Kacper Pempel /File Photo LONDON, (R... More »
GENEVA (Reuters) – Syrian government officials removed trauma kits and surgical supplies from trucks that are part of an inter-agency convoy heading into the besieged Syrian enclave of eastern Ghouta, a World Health Organization (WHO) official told Reuters on ... More »
FILE PHOTO: Signs are placed around a neighborhood as county vector control hand-spray a for adult Aedes mosquitoes after a travel-related case of Zika was confirmed in this the area of San Diego, California, U.S. September 12, 2016. REUTERS/Mike Blake CHICAGO... More »
Professor Ketan Patel works in the lab at MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, Britain January 2, 2018. Picture taken January 2, 2018. REUTERS/Chris Radburn LONDON (Reuters) – Drinking alcohol produces a harmful chemical in the body which can lead... More »
LONDON, (Reuters) – Doctors in France have found the first evidence that a drug normally used to treat lung, kidney or skin cancer may be able to eradicate HIV-infected cells in people with the AIDS virus. In a case described as potentially exciting by scienti... More »
FILE PHOTO: Monsanto’s research farm is pictured near Carman, Manitoba, Canada August 3, 2017. REUTERS/Zachary Prong/File Photo (This Nov 9 story corrects paragraph 11 to remove phrase at end to show Spiegelhalter did NOT say the possible association with AML ... More »
Almost every country in the world now has serious nutrition problems, either due to over-eating leading to obesity or a lack of food leading to undernutrition, according to a major study published on Saturday. More »
Annual deaths from measles dropped below 100,000 worldwide last year for the first time, to 90,000, the World Health Organization (WHO) and other international agencies said on Thursday. More »
Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe has been removed as a goodwill ambassador, the World Health Organization said on Sunday, following outrage among Western donors and rights groups at his appointment. More »
The World Health Organization (WHO) should overturn its decision to appoint Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe as a goodwill ambassador, global health leaders said on Saturday, describing the move as unjustifiable and wrong. More »
A new typhoid vaccine developed by privately-held Bharat Biotech proved safe and highly immunogenic in a study and could be used to prevent millions of infections if it succeeds in final-stage clinical trials, researchers said on Friday. More »
The World Health Organization told governments on Thursday not to get involved in a foundation funded by tobacco firm Philip Morris International to look at ways of reducing the harm from smoking. More »
The alcohol industry uses denial, distortion and distraction to mislead people about the risks of developing cancer from drinking, often employing similar tactics to those of the tobacco industry, a study said on Thursday. More »
More than half a million people in Yemen have been infected with cholera since the epidemic began four months ago and 1,975 people have died, the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Monday. More »
FILE PHOTO: An old man infected with cholera lies on the bed at a hospital in Sanaa, Yemen, May 12, 2017. A cholera epidemic in Yemen, which has infected more than 332,000 people, could spread during the annual haj pilgrimage in Saudi Arabia in September, alth... More »
At least three people worldwide are infected with totally untreatable “superbug” strains of gonorrhoea which they are likely to be spreading to others through sex, the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Friday. More »
A brain training computer game developed by British neuroscientists has been shown to improve the memory of patients in the very earliest stages of dementia and could help such patients avert some symptoms of cognitive decline. More »
FILE PHOTO: Women sit with relatives infected with cholera at a hospital in the Red Sea port city of Hodeidah, Yemen May 14, 2017. REUTERS/Abduljabbar Zeyad The death toll from a major cholera outbreak in Yemen has risen to 1,500, Nevio Zagaria, the World Heal... More »
Democratic Republic of Congo declared its two-month Ebola outbreak officially over on Saturday after 42 days without recording a new case of the disease. More »
Democratic Republic of Congo has suffered two separate outbreaks of polio, a debilitating and potentially deadly disease that the world is trying to eradicate, the World Health Organization said on Tuesday. More »
An outbreak of hepatitis A has spread over the past year among gay men in Europe, the United States and Chile, and upcoming gay pride events and a vaccine shortage could worsen the situation, the World Health Organization said on Wednesday. More »
FILE PHOTO: Aedes aegypti mosquitoes are seen inside Oxitec laboratory in Campinas, Brazil, on February 2, 2016. REUTERS/Paulo Whitaker/File Photo Studies using gene sequencing equipment to trace the path of Zika through the Americas show the virus arrived a y... More »
Life expectancy for young HIV-positive adults has risen by 10 years in the United States and Europe thanks to improvements in AIDS drugs known as antiretroviral therapy, researchers said on Thursday. More »
The introduction of plain packaging for tobacco cigarettes sold in Britain from next month could cut the number of smokers in the country by another 300,000 within a year, researchers said on Thursday. More »
Gaps in vaccination coverage against measles have lead to several outbreaks of the highly-contagious disease in Europe in the past year, with both children and young adults affected, health officials said on Monday. More »
A midwife listens to a baby’s movement through a pregnant woman’s belly in Central Women’s Hospital in Yangon, Myanmar March 17, 2017. REUTERS/Pyay Kyaw Aung Myanmar is training up hundreds of midwives in an effort to reduce the number of women who die in chil... More »
FILE PHOTO: A pair of Aedes albopictus mosquitoes are seen during a mating ritual while the female feeds on a blood meal in a 2003 image from the Centers for Disease Control (CDC). REUTERS/Centers for Disease Control/James Gathany/Handout via Reuters Researche... More »
MRSA (Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus) bacteria strain is seen in a petri dish containing agar jelly for bacterial culture in a microbiological laboratory in Berlin March 1, 2008. MRSA is a drug-resistant ”superbug”, which can cause deadly infectio... More »
A customer smokes a cigarette in a cafe in Prague, Czech Republic, May 25, 2016. REUTERS/David W Cerny/File Photo A global tobacco treaty put in place in 2005 has helped reduce smoking rates by 2.5 percent worldwide in 10 years, researchers said on Tuesday, bu... More »
FILE PHOTO: People inspect damage in Omar Bin Abdulaziz hospital, in the rebel-held besieged area of Aleppo, Syria November 19, 2016. REUTERS/Abdalrhman Ismail/File Photo The international community must do more to protect healthcare in Syria as medical servic... More »
Children look for plastic bottles at the polluted Bagmati River in Kathmandu March 22, 2013. REUTERS/Navesh Chitrakar A quarter of all global deaths of children under five are due to unhealthy or polluted environments including dirty water and air, second-hand... More »
China has detected an evolution in the H7N9 avian flu virus that is capable of causing severe disease in poultry and requires close monitoring, the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Tuesday. More »
Aedes aegypti mosquitoes are seen at the Laboratory of Entomology and Ecology of the Dengue Branch of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in San Juan, Puerto Rico, March 6, 2016. REUTERS/Alvin Baez/File Photo Officials in Washington, D.C.’s pub... More »
Bolivia’s government on Friday said a Danish tourist had tested positive for yellow fever, its first case in a decade, after he visited a jungle area in the far west of the landlocked Andean country. More »
FILE PHOTO: An ash tray with cigarette butts is pictured in Hinzenbach, Austria, February 5, 2012. REUTERS/Lisi Niesner/File Photo Smoking costs the global economy more than $1 trillion a year, and will kill one third more people by 2030 than it does now, acco... More »
A woman looks at a Center for Disease Control (CDC) health advisory sign about the dangers of the Zika virus as she lines up for a security screening at Miami International Airport in Miami, Florida, U.S., May 23, 2016. REUTERS/Carlo Allegri Texas health offic... More »
A woman stands near a poster explaining about the Zika virus at the Ministry of Health office in Jakarta, Indonesia September 2, 2016. REUTERS/Iqro Rinaldi/File Photo The World Health Organization on Friday declared that Zika no longer constitutes an internati... More »
The World Health Organization’s battle to eradicate Guinea worm is being hampered by conflict and infections in dogs but cases have fallen to just 17 so far in 2016, the doctor leading the fight told Reuters on Wednesday. More »
A man lights a cigarette along a road in Mumbai, India, October 26, 2016. REUTERS/Danish Siddiqui/File Photo The leadership of a World Health Organization (WHO) treaty aimed at controlling tobacco could be about to get tougher with the global tobacco industry. More »
Patients going for surgery should bathe or shower beforehand but their surgical site should not be shaved, and antibiotics should be used to prevent infections before and during surgery, but not afterwards, the World Health Organization said on Thursday. More »
A child is given a dose of polio vaccine at an immunisation health centre, in Maiduguri, Borno State, Nigeria, August 29, 2016. REUTERS/Afolabi Sotunde Two companies making vaccines to help the world eradicate polio are failing to produce enough, so many count... More »
The World Health Organization said on Tuesday governments should raise taxes on sugary drinks to fight what it says are global obesity and diabetes epidemics. More »
An airplane carrying a banner asking people to use insect repellent to avoid the Zika virus, flies over Miami, Florida, U.S., September 13, 2016. REUTERS/Carlo Allegri The unprecedented aerial spraying of products that kill both adult mosquitoes as well as the... More »
Aedes aegypti mosquitoes are seen at the Laboratory of Entomology and Ecology of the Dengue Branch of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in San Juan, Puerto Rico, March 6, 2016. REUTERS/Alvin Baez/File Photo State officials in Florida on Frida... More »
Aedes aegypti mosquitoes are seen at the Laboratory of Entomology and Ecology of the Dengue Branch of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in San Juan, Puerto Rico, March 6, 2016. REUTERS/Alvin Baez/File Photo It began with what felt like a punc... More »
Scrub typhus, a deadly disease common in southeast Asia and spread by microscopic biting mites known as chiggers, has now taken hold in a part of South America and may have become endemic there, scientists said on Wednesday. More »
A resident shields his nose as pest control officer carry out fogging in the Aljunied Crescent cluster in Singapore, September 3, 2016 in this photo taken by Antara Foto. Antara Foto/MN Kanwa/via REUTERS Singapore authorities on Sunday confirmed 27 more cases ... More »
Malaysia is bracing for more Zika cases, officials said on Sunday, after detecting the first locally infected patient, which could further stretch a health system struggling with dengue, another mosquito-borne virus that can be fatal. More »
A worker fogs the drains in the common areas of a public housing estate at an area where locally transmitted Zika cases were discovered in Singapore August 31, 2016. REUTERS/Edgar Su Singapore confirmed 26 more cases of locally transmitted Zika infections, the... More »
A contractor fogs a condominium garden in Singapore in an effort to kill mosquitoes, September 5, 2013. REUTERS/Tim Wimborne/File Photo Singapore has confirmed 41 cases of locally transmitted Zika virus, mostly among foreign construction workers, and said it e... More »
Singapore has confirmed its first case of a locally-transmitted Zika virus, which has been linked to microcephaly, a rare birth defect, in Brazil, the health ministry said. More »
GEORGE TOWN Two people have contracted the Zika virus locally in the Cayman Islands, the health department said on Tuesday, bringing the total number infected by the virus in the Caribbean territory to eight. A woman living in Cayman’s capital George Town firs... More »
CHICAGO As U.S. public health officials try to determine whether Zika has arrived in the country, doctors are establishing guidelines on how to care for the rising number of babies whose mothers were infected with the virus during pregnancy. Florida said it is... More »
TROON, Scotland Rory McIlroy had never played Royal Troon before he came to town last Thursday to get ready for the 145th British Open and after his practice round on Tuesday, you could not blame him if he never played it again. Specifically, he might not want... More »
LONDON British scientists say they have developed a model that can predict outbreaks of zoonotic diseases – those such as Ebola and Zika that jump from animals to humans – based on changes in climate. Describing their model as “a major improvement in our under... More »
RIO DE JANEIRO Brazil’s Health Minister Ricardo Barros said on Friday there is no scientific basis for postponing the Olympics because of the Zika virus, explaining that lower temperatures and fewer mosquitoes reduced the chance of infection in August when the... More »
GENEVA/NEW YORK With debate growing over the safety of holding the Olympics in Brazil amid the ongoing Zika virus outbreak, the World Health Organization’s Emergency Committee on Zika will meet in the coming weeks to evaluate the risks tied to going on with th... More »
LIMA Peruvian health authorities on Saturday reported the first case of the Zika virus having been sexually transmitted in the country, after a resident contracted the disease while traveling in Venezuela and then infected his wife once back in Peru. Zika has ... More »
NEW DELHI India’s biggest cigarette maker ITC Ltd said it would resume production at its factories “consequent upon” a favorable court order, two weeks after it decided to shutter its plants over the government’s stringent new packaging rules. India ordered th... More »
MONROVIA A five-year-old boy tested positive for Ebola in Liberia just days after his mother died of the virus in the second flare-up to hit West Africa in recent weeks, the health ministry said on Sunday. A 30-year-old woman died of Ebola in Monrovia last wee... More »
CONAKRY/MONROVIA Guinea will soon vaccinate people who have come into contact with more than 500 men who have recovered from Ebola, a senior health official said, the first time it has vaccinated the contacts of survivors. The decision reflects research that i... More »
