LONDON (Reuters Life!) - The British government launched a three-month public consultation on Saturday on how to cut the number of people smoking.

Removing branding and logos from cigarette packets, making retailers sell cigarettes from under the counter and banning the advertising of smoking paraphernalia, such as cigarette papers, are some of the measures proposed by [...]

MBABANE (AFP) - Four out of five men in Swaziland, the nation with the world’s highest rate of HIV, would refuse to undertake a test for the AIDS virus, official figures showed on Friday.

A total 79.6 percent of those questioned in a survey said they would not be willing to take a test while only [...]

GENEVA (AFP) - The World Health Organisation said Friday that only a total ban on all forms of tobacco advertising can stop the “constantly mutating virus” of the marketing industry and protect vulnerable young people.

Tobacco companies are using ever more sophisticated marketing techniques, including the promotion of non-tobacco items like clothing, or sponsorship of concerts [...]

Women who have almost lost the battle with breast cancer can be given an extra chance by the controversial drug Herceptin.

A trial found that adding Herceptin to conventional chemotherapy delayed progression of the cancer by nearly three months compared with chemotherapy alone - an improvement of 46%.
Survival was extended from 20.4 months to 25.5 months [...]

Women who have almost lost the battle with breast cancer can be given an extra chance by the controversial drug Herceptin.

A trial found that adding Herceptin to conventional chemotherapy delayed progression of the cancer by nearly three months compared with chemotherapy alone - an improvement of 46%.
Survival was extended from 20.4 months to 20.5 months [...]

BEIJING (Reuters) - China will name and shame companies which promise donations for earthquake relief efforts but then fail to live up to their pledges, a government official said on Friday.

A 7.9 magnitude quake on May 12 in the south-western province of Sichuan has killed almost 69,000 people, but has prompted an outpouring of public [...]

PARIS (AFP) - British researchers say they have found strains of germs that appear to play a stealthy role in the rare but mysterious disorder known as sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS).

Also known as cot death, SIDS is defined as the sudden and unexpected death of an infant aged between a week and a year, [...]

As many as one in seven women could get breast cancer in the next two decades, a report has found.

Experts believe bad habits are taking their toll and advise cutting out alcohol and cigarettes, eating more fruit and veg and taking more exercise.
Professor Gareth Evans led the study of 1,442 women who carried the high-risk [...]

MANILA (AFP) - Half a billion young Asians are at risk from diseases associated with nicotine, a senior World Health Organisation official said Friday, denouncing advertising directed at teenagers.

“Youngsters are led to believe that certain types of cigarettes do not contain nicotine, when in fact they do,” Asia-Pacific director Shigeru Omi said in a statement [...]

SYDNEY (AFP) - An Australian doctor on Friday hailed as a “miracle” a baby girl who survived a full-term pregnancy outside the womb.

Durga Thangarajah was delivered by caesarean section at Darwin Private Hospital on Thursday, after spending almost nine months growing inside her mother’s right ovary — stretching the organ’s tissue as thin as paper.
Obstetrician [...]