Health

Washington, United States | AFP | President Donald Trump blamed Democrats and a few holdouts in his own party Tuesday for the collapse of the latest Republican effort to repeal and replace Obamacare — one of Trump’s key campaign pledges. A Republican drive in the Senate to come up with a …

  Miami, United States | AFP | A cancer treatment that genetically alters immune cells has shown success in 71 percent of adults with the most common form of leukemia, and for whom other medicines had failed, US researchers said Monday. The treatment, known as experimental chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell …

Washington, United States | AFP |  Two more US Republican senators announced their opposition Monday to their party’s efforts to revamp Obamacare, derailing the controversial legislation in its current form and potentially dealing a monumental setback to President Donald Trump. Republican leaders are desperate for a major legislative victory this …

  Washington, United States | AFP |  The future of the Republican effort to squash Obamacare hung in the balance Monday with Senator John McCain, whose vote is needed to pass the legislation, recovering from surgery away from Washington. There are no votes to spare in the contentious effort to …

Johannesburg, South Africa | AFP |  An ambulance carrying South Africa’s first democratically elected president Nelson Mandela caught fire as it was rushing him to hospital, his doctor revealed in a book published on Monday. The incident is one of several bizarre episodes contained in the book chronicling Mandela’s final …

Experts demand more money for Non-communicable Diseases Kampala, Uganda | FLAVIA NASSAKA | Demands by some experts for more investment in medicines, facilities, and training of medical staff to handle rising cases of diseases like cancer, diabetes, and heart diseases that are technically referred to as Non-Communicable Disease (NCDs) has …

Washington, United States | AFP |  US authorities announced charges Thursday against more than 400 people, many of them doctors and nurses, over health care scams worth $1.3 billion including the wrongful prescription and distribution of opioids. The Justice Department called it the largest ever enforcement action of its kind …

Melbourne, Australia | AFP | At a secret location in Australia’s southeast, Peter Crook delicately tends to a two-month-old cannabis cutting. Barely knee high, it is one of about 50 government-sanctioned “mother plants” to be cloned for future generations of crops for the country’s fledgling medicinal marijuana industry. “I think we’ll …

One step closer to a gonorrhoea vaccine? Paris, France | AFP |  A discontinued vaccine against a bacteria that causes brain inflammation also shielded people against gonorrhoea, the first drug ever to offer such protection against the sexually transmitted disease, researchers said Tuesday. Using a condom or abstaining from sex …

Have you turned to a mobile app to manage or improve your health? |James Bullen| Apps that claim to treat everything from pimples to depression appeal to the anxiety many of us harbour about our health. But how trustworthy are they, and what’s the evidence behind their effectiveness? Can your …