The European Commission on Wednesday proposed a raft of reforms to the pharmaceutical sector to tackle drug counterfeiting and give Europeans better information about the medicine they are taking.

“We wish to restore the EU’s traditional role as the pharmacy of the world,” EU Industry Commissioner Guenter Verheugen said.

“Everything we are suggesting today builds on the needs and interests of patients. European citizens should benefit from safe, innovative and accessible …

Gays across the United States were urged to skip work on Wednesday as part of the latest protest against recent votes outlawing same-sex marriage in several regions.

The “Day Without A Gay” protest appeared to have had little economic impact but organizers said they had accomplished their main goal of raising awareness of their campaign without shutting down businesses.

Activists had encouraged people across the United States both gay and straight to call in gay for work …

Matchmaking is booming in South Korea amid the global economic crisis, as fathers facing redundancy rush their children into marriage and jobless women find financial security in married life.

Some matchmaking agencies have reported big increases in the number of visitors to their websites, especially since the collapse of Wall Street giant Lehman Brothers in September, which triggered the turmoil.

Matchmaker Duo saw the number of visitors jump to 35,000 in the second wee…

US schoolchildren have improved their performances in mathematics and science in the past decade, but are still outpaced by youngsters in Asia and Europe, a study showed Wednesday.

The math and science scores of US fourth and eighth-graders children aged roughly nine and 12 years old were higher than the average set by The Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS).

But fourth graders in seven Asian and European countries outperformed their American pee…

A team of scientists from the United States and Uruguay may have found a way to delay the onset of chronic neuron-killing diseases such as Lou Gehrig’s disease, according to one of the researchers.

In a study published in the Journal of Neuroscience, scientists at the University of Wisconsin found that by increasing a protein called Nrf2 the lifespan of Lou Gehrig’s disease sufferers can be extended and onset of the disease delayed.

The study has allowed us to potentially…

He Yifan has stayed at a weight loss clinic for more than two months to shed his kilos, one of millions of people in China whose richer lives have led to unwelcome side effects such as obesity.

“Some people (in China) are fat as living standards are quite good now, so people’s habits are not the same as they once were,” said He, 23, a graduate who reached 157 kilograms (345 pounds) while at university.

He is one of 60 people at a weight loss clinic in the northern city of…

Nearly 30,000 Cuban doctors, dentists, nurses and technicians are providing healthcare to the poor through a Venezuelan government-sponsored program, officials here said Wednesday.

13,020 doctors, 2,938 dentists, 4,170 nurses and 9,868 health technicians from Cuba participate in the Barrio Adentro work program, Venezuelan Health Minister Jesus Mantilla told reporters.

Cuban workers provide healthcare services to a network of 6,571 clinics across the country, of which more…

A strain of the Ebola virus has been found in pigs at a farm north of the Philippine capital Manila, according to the country’s top agriculture official.

The Ebola-Reston strain, however, was believed to have affected only domestic livestock and had so far not jumped between species, said Agriculture Secretary Arthur Yap.

This was the first Ebola case in swine, and the government was closely working with the World Health Organisation and the World Organisation of Animal H…

Drug addicts in communist China reportedly face frequent harassment and imprisonment by the country’s own public security forces that has only further alienated drug users from community help, the activist group Human Rights Watch said on Tuesday. Through such behavior, public forces are denying drug users from access to treatment for HIV/AIDS and also addiction-rehabilitation.

“The government has expanded prevention and treatment programmes for drug users,” said Joe Amon, HIV/AIDS p…

Vitamins C and E do not appear to reduce the risk of cancer, according to a pair of new studies which debunk earlier research suggesting supplements might provide some protection against the often deadly ailment.

Some 15,000 men aged 50 and older participated in the study, which included an eight-year follow-up period, but neither vitamin appeared to appreciably reduce their cancer risk, according to the studies appearing in the January 7 issue of the Journal of the American Medical …

With 40 million more people plunged into chronic hunger this year, the UN food agency said that the goal of halving the number of hungry people by 2015 is becoming ever difficult.

“For many countries, the world goal of reducing hunger by half is becoming increasingly difficult to achieve,” Food and Agriculture Organisation Director-General Jacques Diouf told a news conference, referring to one of the Millennium Development Goals set in 2000.

“This sad reality should not b…

More than 80,000 chickens will be slaughtered in Hong Kong after bird flu was found on a poultry farm.

“We have discovered up to 60 dead chickens in that farm. After a series of tests we have confirmed this morning that the chickens did die from the H5 virus,” health secretary York Chow told reporters.

A health department spokeswoman said further tests were needed to determine if it was the deadly H5N1 strain of the virus, which has killed about 250 people worldwide since…

Cancer-linked chemicals had been found in cows as well as pigs, but Ireland’s officials insisted the risk to human health was minimal.

Farm minister Brendan Smith said only three cattle herds had shown illegal levels of dioxins, the substance which led to a domestic and international recall of Irish pork products at the weekend.

Officials said there would be no total recall of beef, Ireland’s most important agricultural product which is worth 2.5 billion euros (3.2 billio…

Clowns and street performers danced in the rainy streets of Lebanon’s capital on Tuesday bringing holiday cheers to the shopping district.

Thirty performers from Germany, Italy, Morocco and Lebanon donned rainbow-coloured wigs and red plastic noses to put on a show, as frustrated drivers blasted their horns.

Some clowns walked on stilts as others danced, juggled, blew balloons and took pictures with the crowd that gathered to watch the show under pouring rain in mainly Mu…

A poll conducted by Harris Interactive says that Americans are working a little bit more and playing a lot less.

This year, the median time Americans spent working, which included housekeeping and studying, was 46 hours a week while the median time spent playing was just 16 hours, according to the poll, for which Harris surveyed 1,010 adults by phone over four days in October.

Time spent working had risen by only one hour compared with last year, but leisure time had plun…

Angered by the passage of a law banning same-sex marriage, gay rights activists are urging people to call in “gay” across the United States and skip work on Wednesday.

They also want people to buy nothing, to show off the economic muscle of the gay community, and spend the day doing volunteer work instead.

“Day Without a Gay,” modelled after the 2006 immigrants rights protests that swept from California to Texas, is intended to show how important gays and lesbians are to …

The United Nations children’s fund said it needed 17.5 million dollars (13.6 million euros) to tackle cholera in Zimbabwe.

“Zimbabwe is grappling with a cholera crisis of unprecedented levels,” UNICEF said in a press briefing.

“During the past eight weeks the crisis has rapidly deteriorated as the basic service delivery system collapsed. Schools and hospitals are closing, patients cannot access health care, teachers, nurses and doctors are not able to come to work,” it sa…

Cancer will surpass heart disease as the world’s number one killer by 2010, with poorer countries set to suffer most from the trend due to smoking, high-fat diets and other factors, international health experts warned Tuesday.

Some 12 million new cancer cases will be diagnosed this year and more than seven million people will die from the disease, according to a World Health Organization (WHO) report.

A projected 38 percent population increase in less developed countries …

The Chairman of the Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority (IRDA) on Tuesday said that low consumer awareness and insufficient healthcare infrastructure are the major hindrances to widen the reach of healthcare insurance in India.

“Even if there is a marginal increase in the type of healthcare insurance services, we will find our physical capacities insufficient. Therefore, there is an urgent need to build alternative systems to take care of the deficit in healthcare infrastructure,” stressed J. Hari Narayan, Chairman, and IRDA, at the Health Insurance Summit 2008 organized by the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) here.

Mr. Narayan emphasized on building up investment in infrastructure and adequate training along with focus on improving the traditional systems of government and public hospitals.

“In order to cover larger proportion of the Indian population, it is requisite that we encourage the public private partnership mode,” advocated the IRDA Chairman. Mr. Narayan also stressed the importance of developing new and simple insurance products, where majority of the policy could be on the Internet and further recommended that insurance policies be also explained in vernacular languages to reach the masses.

“Requiring the third-party administrators (TPAs) to build their IT systems and infrastructure for speedier claim processes, encouraging insurers to make their systems robust and embarking on wide consumer awareness programmes are the various measures undertaken by IRDA towards the growth of the health insurance in India,” said Mr. Narayan.

“It is time to take major steps in bringing good health to all people,” said Prathap C. Reddy Chairman, CII National Healthcare Council & Chairman Apollo Hospitals Group, through video conferencing at the CII Summit. While commending the model followed by the Andhra Pradesh Government in making healthcare reach the masses, he said measures should be taken to make such a model sustainable with appropriate contribution by consumers, providers and insurers.

Regarding consumer awareness as a major challenge for the healthcare insurance in India, Dr. Reddy stressed on the importance of making health insurance a way of life by spreading consumer awareness rather than through the use of compulsive methods.
The CII-KPMG report on ‘Health Insurance Inc. — the road ahead’ was released at the summit. The report gives an outlook of the healthcare insurance industry with emphasis on the challenges and growth enablers.

The US health insurance companies are tying up with Indian corporate hospitals for flying down patients to the country for treatment in order to cut costs. Wellpoint, the largest health insurance company in the US, and Bluecross Blueshield have joined hands with Apollo Hospitals to treat the US citizens.

Wellpoint and Apollo Hospitals are set to start a pilot project next month to treat the US insurer’s members in Apollo’s hospitals in Delhi and Bangalore, which was approved by the Joint Commission International (JCI), the US-based hospital certifying agency.

Apollo Hospitals president (corporate development) Anil Mani said: “The pilot project will run for 6-12 months.” The Wellpoint’s website says it has around 35 million members. In other words, one in every nine Americans is affiliated with the company.

Apollo, the country’s largest hospital chain, was in discussions with Wellpoint for around two years. Mr Mani said that it has also tied up with another health insurance firm, Companion Healthcare, the South Carolina subsidiary of another leading US insurance company BlueCross Blueshield.

Similarly, Wockhardt Hospital, which tied up with Companion Healthcare last month, hopes to ink similar deals with the other US health insures to treat the insured citizens. Wockhardt Hospitals CEO Vishal Bali said, “Wellpoint has already completed assessment of Wockhardt Hospitals. We are also in talks with few other health insurance companies and exploring the possibility of expanding our tie-up with Bluecross Blueshield to other US states.”

Can a nation go bonkers over a president? Apparently, yes! Americans, this Christmas, are buying little trinkets with Presidential-Elect Barack Obama’s stamp on it!

Americans can enjoy your morning cuppa with the Obama coffee mugs which are on sale now. Or, those who don’t drink coffee might prefer a pair of Obama cufflinks to dress up their shirtsleeves, or perhaps an Obama Christmas bulb to adorn the holiday tree

There has been a sudden explosion of collectible Obama co…

An experimental malaria vaccine was able to reduce the rate of infection and disease in children by 53 to 65 percent in two clinical trials conducted in Africa, according to studies released Monday.

Researchers have been trying to develop a vaccine for the deadly, mosquito-borne illness which kills nearly a million people a year and sickens 250 million others for more than 70 years.

“This is the first candidate malaria vaccine to show significant protect in laboratory and…

China will launch a four-month food safety campaign from Wednesday to prevent the toxic chemical melamine and other harmful substances from ending up on the dinner table, the government said.

The crackdown, which also targets excessive levels of additives, comes amid a widening scandal over tainted milk that has sickened hundreds of thousands of babies and shocked the nation.

“The recent major food safety incident… showed it is currently a very serious problem that ille…

Brazilian authorities said Monday they have identified a mysterious disease that killed a visiting South African businessman last week as spotted fever, a tick-borne malady.

The diagnosis capped a health scare triggered by the death Tuesday of the 53-year-old man, who is believed to have contracted the illness in his home country.

Initially, it was feared he might have succumbed to an arenavirus, a highly contagious, often deadly group of hemorrhagic diseases endemic to p…

Papuan tribesmen whose attire is the well known feathers and long gourd may not change their traditinal ways depite the porn law in Indonesia.

Suroba, who estimates his age in his sixties, remembers the last time the government launched a campaign to eradicate the penis gourd, known here as a koteka, in the 1970s. It was a dismal failure.

“Back then we were wearing our traditional clothes, like the koteka, and we’re still wearing them now,” he said.

The latest …

Roselyn Moyo has stopped allowing her children to play outside on the streets of Harare for fear of contracting cholera. The streets have become an unhealthy sight with mounds of trash that has not been cleared for months, making it a potential hotbed for infection.

“My kids no longer go out to play with their friends,” the housewife told AFP.

“I am afraid they might get cholera. Uncollected refuse is lying all over our neighbourhood with flies flying all over. I can’t ris…

The food crisis in Ethiopia and other countries in the Horn of Africa region is severe and could rapidly turn into famine, the head of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies warned Thursday.

Calling the crisis “the worst … in 10 years”, IFRC secretary general Bekele Geleta said: “After March, it could be a famine situation”.

“Usually, people start responding when they see emaciated children on their screens. If assistance is not given, in a…

South African health experts said Thursday that a mystery illness that killed a local man in Brazil this week was unlikely to be linked to a recent outbreak of deadly haemorrhagic virus in Johannesburg.

The 53-year-old man, who died Tuesday in Rio de Janeiro, had an operation in mid-October at a Johannesburg hospital which treated several cases of a new arenavirus strain which killed four people.

But South Africa’s National Institute for Communicable Diseases, which is wo…

Americans celebrate the 75th anniversary of the end of Prohibition of alcohol , remembering the dry spell following a constitutional amendment in 1920.

The nationwide ban on the manufacture, sale, transportation, import and export of intoxicating beverages was brought into law by conservatives for moral and health reasons, and repealed in 1933 on economic grounds.

But to this day, pockets of Prohibition exist in the United States, with entire counties still “dry” and boo…

With millions of AIDS victims also facing a food crisis, the fight against HIV/AIDS is getting a lot tougher, warned a UN agency official.

The food crisis has an “impact on the real income of poor people, that will go down in relative or in absolute terms because the prices go up,” said Martin Bloem, an expert on nutrition and HIV/AIDS from the World Food Programme (WFP).

Poor people already spend 60 to 70 percent of their income on food, he told participants of the 15th …