The Health Secretary, Matt Hancock, has suggested that he is considering ‘all options’ to increase vaccination uptake in a bid to protect children against illnesses including measles. Mr Hancock said that he did not want to impose compulsory immunisation, but stressed that such a measure could not be ruled out due to an increase in […]
A major study has suggested that more adults in the world are classified as obese than underweight. Published in The Lancet and led by researchers from Imperial College London, the study compared the body mass index of almost 20 million adult males and females between 1975 and 2014. It discovered that obesity has tripled in […]
The World Health Organization has warned of the likelihood of the Zika virus spreading across all countries in the Americas. The virus, which has now been identified in several countries in Central, South and North America, has been associated with serious birth defects and some countries have already encouraged women to delay getting pregnant until more information […]
The number of deaths caused by malaria has halved, according to statistics from the World Health Organisation. The latest figures show that the number of people dying from malaria has fallen by 4.3 million since 2001 and more countries have completely eliminated malaria. There were no indigenous cases reported in Sri Lanka or Azerbaijan and […]
A study published in a British medical journal, The Lancet, has suggested that deaths from malaria across the world are underestimated. While the World Health Organisation (WHO) recently suggested that 650,000 deaths occurred during 2010, other research believes this figure should be significantly higher – an estimated 1.2 million in fact. The research is based […]