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Diarrhea doesn't make headlines. Nor does pneumonia. AIDS and malaria tend to get most of the attention.
No one has identified ground zero in the swine flu epidemic. Just where or when the new strain of influenza first jumped from a pig and began infecting people is a scientific mystery — one that a group of flu detectives is determined to solve.
Bird flu kills more than 60 percent of its human victims, but doesn't easily pass from person to person. Swine flu can be spread with a sneeze or handshake, but kills only a small fraction of the people it infects.
Now that the swine flu virus has passed from a farmworker to pigs, could it jump back to people? The question is important, because crossing species again could make it more deadly.
When researchers analyzed vials of treated wastewater taken from a plant where about 90 Indian drug factories dump their residues, they were shocked. Enough of a single, powerful antibiotic was being spewed into one stream each day to treat every person in a city of 90,000.
Thich Huyen Quang, the patriarch of an outlawed Buddhist church in Vietnam who spent more than two decades in and out of house arrest, died Saturday after months of ailing health. He was 87.
John McCain has an unusual endorsement — from the Vietnamese jailer who says he held him captive for about five years as a POW and now considers him a friend.
As frustrated foreign aid workers plead to enter Myanmar, one American couple is already ferrying supplies to cyclone victims.
Preventing a disease disaster in Myanmar is now a "race against time," as many impoverished victims still await help a week after the brutal cyclone, experts warned Saturday.
Disease outbreaks spread by mosquitoes, dirty water and poor sanitation were among the World Health Organization's biggest concerns after a devastating cyclone hit Myanmar, home to one of the world's shoddiest health care systems.
China reported a jump Monday in the number of children sickened with hand, foot and mouth disease, saying more than 11,900 cases have been reported.
The world is less safe because Indonesia is withholding samples of the bird flu virus from the international community, the top U.S. health official said Wednesday, adding that he is hopeful the issue can be resolved soon.
Sitting cross-legged on a straw mat in the middle of the living room, Tong Phuoc Phuc sings a soothing Vietnamese lullaby. For a moment, his deep voice works magic, and the tiny room crammed with 13 babies is still.
Drowning is a top killer of children in Asia, but the problem is often overlooked in poor countries plagued by deaths caused by speeding cars, suffocation and other accidents, according to a report released Tuesday.
Fears of a global bird flu pandemic that once dominated headlines have largely vanished in the West, but four years after the virus began ravaging Asian poultry, it continues to quietly spread.
Thousands of Catholics blocked a busy street in Vietnam's capital Friday in a rare public demonstration, chanting and praying for the Communist government to return land once owned by the church.
Thousands of Vietnamese living illegally in the United States now face deportation after the two countries completed an agreement Tuesday, a move that sparked worry among immigrant communities.
A senior U.S. official urged the international community Monday to put more pressure on Myanmar's military rulers, saying the junta has made no progress in opening a dialogue with the pro-democracy opposition.
Limited human-to-human bird flu transmission may have occurred in Pakistan, but no new infections have been reported for two weeks and there appears to be no threat of further spread, a top World Health Organization official said.
The World Health Organization warned Monday that countries should be on alert for bird flu because it is again on the move, with Pakistan reporting South Asia's first human infections and Myanmar logging its first human case.
Bird flu has resurfaced in parts of Asia, with human deaths reported in Indonesia and China and fresh outbreaks plaguing other countries during the winter months when the virus typically flares.
Vietnam's preference for boys over girls is further tipping the balance between the sexes in Asia, already skewed by a strong bias for boys among Chinese and Indians. The trend could lead to increased trafficking of women and social unrest, a U.N. report says.
They travel for days though checkpoints, across dangerous roads and past Myanmar's bribe-hungry soldiers to make it to the Thai border. They're not refugees fleeing the junta — they simply want to see a doctor.
The worst outbreak of dengue fever in years has hit Southeast Asia, prompting the World Health Organization to call for better prevention campaigns as experts question whether global warming is partly to blame.
The head trauma ward at Viet Duc Hospital in Vietnam's capital is so crammed with beds, they line both sides of the room and spill out in the hallway. All are filled with unconscious patients with head injuries — motorcyclists who crashed with no helmets.
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