Zambian President Hakainde Hichilema has urged people to relocate from towns to villages following the deaths of about 300 people in a cholera outbreak. Poor sanitation in some densely populated urban areas was a good breeding ground for cholera, he said. To decongest major towns, residents should relocate to rural areas where there was enough
A Turkish doctor selling weight-loss “holidays” abroad told an undercover reporter to gain weight so she could have gastric sleeve surgery. Dr Ogün Erşen told the reporter to “eat some snacks” so she could increase her body mass index (BMI) to qualify for his weight loss surgery. The reporter had a BMI of 24.4, which
A woman with HIV is using social media to encourage people to see it “like any other health condition”. Victoria Roscow was diagnosed with HIV when she was nine-weeks-pregnant and thought it was a “death sentence”. The 29-year-old said she contracted the virus from unprotected sex with a previous partner, but her husband and son
More Americans than ever are dying from fentanyl overdoses as the fourth wave of the opioid epidemic crashes through every community, in every corner of the country. It was six years ago that Kim Blake’s son Sean died from an accidental fentanyl overdose in Burlington, Vermont. He was 27 years old. “Every time I hear
Russian authorities are limiting access to abortions in an attempt to confront the country’s longstanding demographic crisis. Measures include making it an offence trying to persuade a woman to have an abortion and pressuring private clinics to stop carrying out the procedure. Feminist groups say the campaign is putting the lives of women at risk.
The World Health Organization (WHO) has asked China for more information on “clusters of undiagnosed pneumonia” reportedly spreading among children in the north of the country. Reports by non-state media say paediatric hospitals in parts of China are overwhelmed with sick children. Chinese authorities have attributed a spike in flu-like illnesses this winter to the
In a world first, medical regulators in the UK have approved a gene therapy that aims to cure two blood disorders. The treatment for sickle cell disease and beta thalassemia is the first to be licensed using the gene-editing tool known as Crispr, for which its discoverers were awarded the Nobel prize in 2020. This is
US researchers say they may have discovered why some people get a headache after just one small glass of red wine, even though they are fine drinking other types of alcohol. The University of California team say it is due to a compound in red grapes that can mess with how the body metabolises alcohol.
