AFP Health

Children exposed to their parents' cigarette smoke are at greater risk of suffering serious cardiovascular health problems later in life, a study showed Wednesday.The Menzies Research Institute in Tasmania collected data from a Finnish and Australian study following children first examined 20 years ago who are now aged in their mid-30s.It found that those exposed to passive smoke as youngsters have less elasticity in their arteries, an indicator of poor cardiovascular health.Study author and...Read Full Story

The World Health Organization on Wednesday re-appointed Margaret Chan as its chief, the sole candidate nominated for the post.Chan was re-elected at a meeting of the World Health Assembly, the WHO's decision-making body, in Geneva.It is the second term for the former Hong Kong health chief who has headed the UN body since November 2006.Back in 2009, it was Chan who declared swine flu the world's first flu pandemic in 40 years.Chan's next mandate will begin on July 1 and see her remain...Read Full Story

Beijing's public toilets must not exceed two flies, according to new standards handed down by zealous officials striving to clean up China's notoriously filthy loos.The unusual rule applies to lavatories in parks, railway stations, airports, hospitals, malls and supermarkets in the capital, said the Beijing News on Wednesday.More conventional demands from the municipal committee in charge of the image of the city include an order that there is no accumulation of urine or water in the capital...Read Full Story

The World Health Organisation said Tuesday it was optimistic drug-resistant malaria that has emerged along Thailand's borders with Cambodia and Myanmar could be contained within the region.Malaria that was resistant to the commonly used anti-malarial artemisinin emerged on the Thailand-Cambodia border eight years ago, and has since also been discovered along the Thailand-Myanmar border, scientists say."This emerged around eight years ago, and so far we haven't found any artemisinin resistance...Read Full Story

Nearly half of transgender people in the Asia-Pacific region could have HIV as poor healthcare and high-risk lifestyles push infection rates to "critical levels", a UN report said Thursday.The region's estimated 9-9.5 million transgender population is "bearing the brunt of the HIV epidemic", the UN Development Programme study said, adding that figures suggest 49 percent of the community could be infected.The figure is drawn from anecdotal evidence of infection rates among trans-women -- men...Read Full Story

A significant expansion in access to treatment helped slash the number of AIDS-related deaths in 2010, bringing the number of people living with HIV to a record 34 million, the United Nations said Monday."We are on the verge of a significant breakthrough in the AIDS response," said Michel Sidibe, executive director of UNAIDS. "New HIV infections continue to fall and more people than ever are starting treatment," he noted.Speaking to journalists in Berlin for the presentation of the report...Read Full Story

A long-term fall in the global abortion rate has tapered off and the number of unsafe pregnancy terminations is rising worryingly, according to a report published by The Lancet on Thursday.Between 1995 and 2003, the number of abortions around the world for every 1,000 women aged between 15 and 44 fell from 35 to 29.But in 2008, the rate was almost unchanged, at 28 per 1,000, due to a surge in abortions in developing countries.The Lancet report also highlighted a dramatic increase in the...Read Full Story

Snubbing the outdoors for books, video games and TV is the reason up to nine in ten school-leavers in big East Asian cities are near-sighted, according to a study published on Friday.Neither genes nor the mere increase in activities like reading and writing is to blame, the researchers suggest, but a simple lack of sunlight.Exposure to the sun's rays is believed to stimulate production of the chemical dopamine, which in turn stops the eyeball from growing elongated and distorting the focus of...Read Full Story

Thousands of women arrive at health clinics across the United States every year, facing the heavy burden of ending pregnancies that were unplanned and unwanted.But in a growing number of states, before being allowed to have an abortion, women are compelled to undergo a procedure that lets a medical professional hear the fetus's beating heart and describe details about its development.Women's rights advocates say the unwanted and controversial medical procedures appear designed to convince...Read Full Story

A professor at a Swiss university on Tuesday unveiled a robot that can be controlled by the brainwaves of a paraplegic person wearing an electrode-fitted cap, news agency ATS reported.A paralysed man at a hospital in the town of Sion demonstrated the device, sending a mental command to a computer in his room, which transmitted it to another computer that moved a small robot 60 kilometres (37 miles) away in Lausanne.The system was developed by Jose Millan, a professor at the Federal...Read Full Story