Abortion

Attorney General Steve Six must justify a lawsuit against a district judge over abortion records.

Attorney General Steve Six must justify a lawsuit against a district judge over abortion records.

... bill, a call to lower the legal abortion period from its current 24-week limit, was ... not attend as he was flying to China on a Parliamentary trip, but said: "I ...

' Fewer than 25,000 pregnancies were terminated by abortion in Michigan in 2007, the lowest number since state record-keeping began in 1979, the Department of Community Health reported today.

The two candidates running for the Missouri Republican gubernatorial nomination called for new restrictions on abortion in the state Monday after the Legislature adjourned last week without passing an antiabortion measure (HB 1831), the

On Tuesday, a three-judge panel of the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond, Va., declared a Virginia law banning so-called "partial-birth" abortion unconstitutional, the Washington Post reports. In a 2-1 decision, the panel said the law infringed on a woman's constitutional right to abortion (Barnes, Washington Post, 5/21).

A campaign has been launched in the UK and US to raise awareness of the link between oral health and serious general conditions such as diabetes, strokes, heart disease and low birth weight babies. It follows a survey by the British Dental Health Foundation (BDHF) and Oral B which found that 85% of people are unaware of the link between the health of the mouth and the health of the body. Of those surveyed, 13% said they have flossed while driving and 27% said they have opened a bottle with their teeth.

Researchers have found that strains of bird flu found in Korea and Japan this year are almost genetically the same. The National Veterinary Research and Quarantine Service said Wednesday that the genetic makeup of a strain of bird flu sampled from chickens in Gimje, South Jeolla Province was 99.7 percent identical to a sample from swans found in Japan's Akita prefecture. The finding gives grounds to analysis that the latest outbreak of avian influenza may have originated from migratory birds.

A programme to routinely test patients infected with HIV for TB and vice versa has taken off in Tamil Nadu from January this year. Testing for co-infection goes a long way in reducing the mortality rate. There are 760 Voluntary Counselling and Testing Centres (VCTC) that test for HIV, and 30 centres, one each in the district headquarter hospital, that test for TB in the State.
Though patients were cross referred even earlier, the response was not very encouraging as some patients never actually got themselves tested for the other disease. This was particularly so in the case of TB patients.

For years, smokers have been exhorted to take the initiative and quit: use a nicotine patch, chew nicotine gum, take a prescription medication that can help, call a help line, just say no. But a new study finds that stopping is seldom an individual decision. Smokers tend to quit in groups, the study finds, which means smoking cessation programs should work best if they focus on groups rather than individuals.