The World Health Organisation has declared an international emergency over the explosive spread of the mosquito-borne zika virus, which is linked to birth defects in the Americas, saying it is an “extraordinary event”.

Deaths from malaria have dropped 60% in the last 15 years, although three billion people remain at risk, a World Health Organisation (WHO) and Unicef report has found.

The head of the World Health Organisation has boosted beleaguered South Korea, saying efforts to contain a deadly Mers virus outbreak are reassuring and the public risk is low.

The latest tool to help women achieve the perfect hour-glass figure is the waist trainer, made popular by Kim Kardashian. Deirdre Reynolds tests it out.

Homicide third leading cause of death among males aged 15-44

The number of deaths by drowning in Ireland last year was the lowest in over 75 years.

Scientists in Cork are working on medicines to target antibiotic-resistant superbugs, including MRSA.

The ebola crisis may be one of the most severe health emergencies in modern times but it shows the rich get the best care while the poor are left to die, writes John Lloyd

The WHO chief wasn’t told of the scale of the crisis until three months after it was detected and bureaucratic messes delayed deployment of vital aid, write Jason Gale and John Lauerman

President Barack Obama appointed an ebola tsar for the US, and the government said a Texas health worker who may have had contact with specimens from an ebola patient was isolated on a cruise ship.

The World Health Organisation did not act decisively when the ebola outbreak in West Africa was confirmed in March.

The Ebola outbreak is “the most severe, acute health emergency seen in modern times”, the World Health Organisation has said.

Barack Obama, in a chilling assessment of international efforts to stem a deadly Ebola outbreak, said the world has not done enough to respond to a health crisis that poses a growing threat to regional and global security.

A death by suicide occurs every 40 seconds somewhere in the world, the World Health Organisation said in its first global report calling for more suicide prevention strategies.

Liberia said it would treat two infected doctors with the scarce experimental ebola drug ZMapp, the first Africans to receive the treatment, while authorities in Spain said a priest had died of the disease.

The World Health Organisation urged nations worldwide to help stop the spread of Ebola as it declared the outbreak in West Africa to be an international public health emergency.

The World Health Organisation has urged nations to donate money and resources to stop the spread of ebola as it declared the outbreak in West Africa to be an international public health emergency.

The World Health Organisation has declared the Ebola outbreak in West Africa to be an international public health emergency that requires an extraordinary response to stop its spread.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) has declared the Ebola outbreak in West Africa to be an international public health emergency that requires an extraordinary response to stop its spread.

Hundreds of troops have been deployed in Sierra Leone and Liberia under an emergency plan to fight the worst outbreak of the deadly ebola virus, which has killed more than 826 people across West Africa.

An Ebola outbreak that has killed more than 700 people in West Africa is moving faster than the efforts to control the disease, the head of the World Health Organisation (WHO) has warned.

The deadliest recorded Ebola outbreak surpassed 700 deaths across West Africa as the World Health Organisation (WHO) announced dozens of new deaths reported in the last several days.

A total of 37 members have been appointed to the Healthy Ireland Council charged with making the nation healthier.

A group of 53 leading scientists has warned the World Health Organisation not to classify e-cigarettes as tobacco products, arguing that doing so would jeopardise a major opportunity to slash disease and deaths caused by smoking.

Almost one third of the world is now fat, and no country has been able to curb obesity rates in the last three decades, according to a new global analysis.

The spread of polio to countries previously considered free of the crippling disease represents a global health emergency, the World Health Organisation has said.

Cancer’s global death toll is tipped to explode in the next two decades, rising from an estimated 8.2m to 13m deaths per year by 2025, according to a new report.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) is giving China’s health minister an award for tackling smoking.

Health data released yesterday provided the clearest evidence to date of the spread of chronic diseases such as diabetes and heart disease from developed nations to poorer regions such as Africa, as lifestyles and diets there change.

Tobacco-related deaths have almost tripled in the last decade to almost 50m.

THE World Health Organisation has declared the swine flu pandemic officially over, months after many national authorities started cancelling vaccine orders and shutting down hot lines as the disease ebbed from media headlines.

A new gel can block the Aids virus, halving a woman’s chances of getting HIV from an infected partner, US scientists say.

Experts will investigate the World Health Organisation's response to the swine flu outbreak and probably examine whether it could have been clearer when it declared a pandemic of what turned out to be a relatively mild disease.

Microsoft founder Bill Gates today announced he will give $10bn (€7.16bn) over the next decade to research new vaccines and bring them to the world’s poorest countries.

THERE’S a sort of poetic justice to it: having written back in April about the danger to mental health arising from swine flu hysteria, I have now come down with the bug myself. Perhaps 100,000 people in the State have likewise been struck.

A swine flu vaccine may be further away than has been claimed, the head of the World Health Organisation indicated today.

THE World Health Organisation (WHO) yesterday declared the swine flu epidemic has reached global pandemic status, the first in 41 years.

THE World Health Organisation declared a swine flu pandemic yesterday – the first global flu epidemic in 41 years – as infections in the United States, Europe, Australia, South America and elsewhere climbed to nearly 30,000 cases.

The head of the World Health Organisation says the swine flu outbreak appears to have reached pandemic proportions.