MEDICINE

Some countries have been ambushed by sudden severe outbreaks of disease and death from the H1N1 flu pandemic, and have gone over the top in their response, a European flu specialist said on Friday.

The H1N1pandemic flu virus could kill up to 40,000 people across Europe and be followed by seasonal flu waves that could kill the same number, European health experts said on Friday.

Home heart rate monitors are dangerous in the hands of untrained mothers according to new information published by the BMJ say the Telegraph.

CareFusion Corp, the medical device company spun off from Cardinal Health on Sept. 1, posted a higher-than-expected quarterly profit, driven by strong demand in ventilators for flu and emergency preparedness related to H1N1, or swine flu.

An experimental vaccine cured nearly half of women with pre-cancerous growths on their genitals, producing major improvement in nearly four out of five, researchers in the Netherlands reported on Wednesday.

Nearly a third of Americans who die are in the hospital at the time and their last treatments cost the U.S. economy $20 billion, according to a report released on Wednesday.

States and counties will be struggling to vaccinate people against the swine flu pandemic well into December and January -- long after the first peak of the virus in the United States, officials said on Wednesday.

Americans are more likely than people in 10 other countries to have trouble getting medical treatment because of insurance restrictions or cost, an international survey of primary care doctors released on Wednesday found.

Merck & Co and Schering-Plough Corp said their $41.1 billion merger will be completed later on Tuesday, marking the close of the second huge deal in the pharmaceutical industry in recent weeks.

Swine flu can cause severe disease in people of all ages and appears to pose a special threat to those who are obese, according to an analysis ofH1N1 cases in California released on Tuesday.

The United States ranks 30th in terms of infant mortality, an important measure of the quality of healthcare, according to a report released on Tuesday.

U.S. employers who tell workers to stay home when they are sick will have to give them paid time off for up to five days under new federal legislation proposed on Tuesday.

Low total cholesterol may be a sign of cancer rather than a cause, as some researchers have suggested, and men who have low cholesterol actually have a lower risk of developing high-risk prostate cancer, two teams reported on Tuesday.

Poultry workers may be at particularly high risk of developing several forms of cancer, according to a new study that points to viruses carried by birds as a possible cause.

When it comes to treating kids for acute gastroenteritis - an infection of the stomach - many children's hospitals in the U.S. are ignoring evidence-based guidelines - and costing the health care system more than $1 billion in unnecessary spending, according to the authors of a new study.

Up to 30 million doses of vaccine against the pandemic H1N1 flu have been delivered to the U.S. government and production is now picking up, officials said on Monday.

China is experiencing an epidemic of syphilis, a sexually transmitted disease that the country virtually wiped out in the 1960s, a senior public health official was quoted as saying on Tuesday.

Many U.S. primary care doctors are out of step with guidelines on Pap testing for cervical cancer -- largely because they overuse the test, according to a study published Monday.

Pregnant women and other people at high risk should be vaccinated against the H1N1 swine fluvirus as the cold weather begins to bite in the northern hemisphere, the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Tuesday.

Getting a patient's family history is widely regarded as a standard element of good medical care. But a report published today concludes that there isn't much good evidence that obtaining such

The hepatitis B vaccine - given to protect against infection by a virus that can cause severe liver damage and cancer - may protect for more than two decades, according to a new study.