The titanium metal box implanted inside Hugo Campos' chest keeps him alive. The size of a wristwatch, the €20,000 gadget houses a generator, circuitry and a battery with thin wires attached directly to the Californian's ...

EU anti-fraud office Olaf had no hard evidence that former health commissioner John Dalli tried to solicit a bribe from a tobacco firm. The information comes from its confidential report into the Dalli case, part of ...

The EU anti-fraud office, Olaf, violated its mandate and broke EU laws in its "Dalligate" probe, according to a leaked report by its own supervisors. The leaked paper - a five-page executive summary of a more extensive ...

In the lead-up to an inter ministerial meeting between EU and India next week, European trade negotiators continue to pressure India and other developing countries to accept so-called “free trade” agreements that favour ...

Europeans are living longer but health inequalities between men and women, countries and population segments are in some cases getting worse. The conclusions were made by the World Health Organisation (WHO) in its ...

In recent years, cases of doctors who are guilty of malpractice and then migrate to other European countries to continue their practice have been causing public outrage. Now, the European Commission wants to install a ...

The tobacco industry in Brussels spends over €5 million a year and employs around around 100 full-time lobbyists to influence EU legislation, says an anti-smoking advocacy group. “These figures are only the tip of the ...

Over the course of two weeks in 2011, Stefan Radut lost seven kilos in weight. He coughed constantly. He was chronically tired and had difficulty sleeping. His girlfriend finally persuaded him to go to a doctor. There ...

Any non-food product sold in the EU must be traceable and labelled with the name and address of its manufacturer. The rules are part of a larger safety and market surveillance package put forward on Wednesday (13 ...

All cigarette packs in the EU from 2015 onward will be plastered with images of diseased body parts, menthol, vanilla and slim cigarettes will be banned, while snus - a type of mouth tobacco - will not be sold outside ...

People from Malta are least likely to say they have health problems that limit their daily activities. In 2011, almost 88 out of 100 told EU pollsters they were fine. In contrast, only 64 percent of Slovenes did and - ...

Euro deputies have given mixed views on Tonio Borg, Malta’s candidate for EU commissioner on health and consumer affairs. Socialist group leader Hannes Swoboda said on Wednesday (14 November) his group would support ...

A leading critic of Malta's would-be EU commissioner has said he will back him after his answers on gay rights at a European Parliament hearing. British centre-left MEP Michael Cashman - who co-chairs parliament's gay ...

Malta's would-be EU commissioner, Tonio Borg, has tried to dispel his image as a Roman Catholic hardliner in a bid to win MEPs' approval. The 55-year-old politician said in his written reply to a European Parliament ...

The European Commission has frozen work on its new anti-tobacco law, despite warnings it is falling into a tobacco industry trap. Spokeswoman Pia Ahrenkilde-Hansen said on Wednesday (17 October) that internal talks on ...

EU health commissioner John Dalli has resigned "to defend his reputation" in a dispute on tobacco lobbying. The European Commission said its top Maltese official stepped down on Tuesday (16 October) after his boss, Jose ...

Speculators are threatening the supply of medication to countries worst hit by the sovereign debt crisis, according to research by business analysts GlobalData. GlobalData's report, published Wednesday (22 August) ...

The European Commission on Friday (15 June) was accused of censorship for omitting from a report on men's health issues such as homosexuality, condom use, divorce and suicide. The commission, for its part, denies any ...

The European Commission has promised to re-write EU legislation on medical devices to avoid a repeat of the breast implant scandal involving now defunct French-firm Poly Implant Prothese (PIP) which emerged last year. ...

It killed 695,000 people in the EU last year. But despite restaurant bans and gruesome health labels, the number of smokers is hardly going down. A European Commission survey published for the UN's international anti- ...

Start Trek fans will know about the Tricorder, a handheld device used by Captain Kirk and company to, among other things, scan the biological state of the living creatures they encountered on their interplanetary voyage ...

Healthcare, strictly speaking, is none of the EU's business. It is a sensitive issue that member states have largely preferred to keep in their own hands. They have allowed the EU to do little more than "support, co- ...

A man from Italy enters a pharmacy in Athens, Greece, to get some medication. Only, he has no prescription. Oh no! Fortunately, he has an e-prescription. A what? An e-prescription, an online prescription saved under his ...

The town hospital of Guriceel, in the Galguduud region in central Somalia, is understaffed. The doctors who once worked there have all but fled the fighting that has afflicted the country for decades. Those who remain ...

Early investors in Zenicor, a Swedish medical technology company founded in 2003, are probably congratulating themselves on their foresight. "Over the last three years, we have had an annual growth of more than 50 ...

E-health is already the third largest sector in the healthcare industry after pharmaceuticals and medical devices. With new technology fundamentally changing doctor-patient relations and posing new questions on privacy, ...

The 'e' for electronic has become a familiar sight in front of words like mail, book, or commerce, but health has long been spared the token affix of the digital age. Until recently that is. Now e-health has arrived and ...

Doctors, it is said, are not exactly what might be called early adopters of new technologies. It took them almost a generation to get used to the stethoscope after it was invented in the early 19th century. Today, they ...

The European commission aims to strengthen oversight of companies that certify medical devices following a breast implant scandal thought to have affected at least 400,000 women worldwide. The low-grade breast implants ...

The number of suicides in Greece reached a pan-European high during the first half of 2011, according to figures recently released by the Greek health ministry. Experts believe the increase is due to the effects of the ...

Austerity measures in former Communist EU countries have taken a heavy toll on underpaid and overworked doctors, with a state of emergency still ongoing in Slovakia after a mass walk-out. The Slovak government is to ...

Almost every week for months now has appeared to be a crunch week for the eurozone, but with lending between banks freezing up, contagion spreading to Germany, and even the circumspect EU economy chief Olli Rehn ...

In a faint note of optimism at a gloomy conference in Brussels on the effects the crisis is having on the lives of people with disabilities, the Austrian city of Salzburg on Thursday (1 December) was declared the most ...

Undocumented migrants who are not allowed to work legally have to pay for medical care in most member states, sometimes putting their lives at stake, a recent report on healthcare by the EU fundamental rights agency ...

Startling declines in the health of Greek citizens and increases in the rates of drug abuse, HIV infection, and suicide have resulted from the economic crisis and the strict austerity embraced by the country, says a new ...

Last week the European Parliament voted to approve trade preferences to the Palestinian Authority that will allow agricultural and fisheries products from West Bank and Gaza to enter the EU without duties and almost ...

Europeans and Westerners in general are accustomed to being asked to donate money to emergency aid NGOs to tackle medical humanitarian crises in Africa, Asia and other parts of the developing world where governments are ...

The European Commission has said its austerity measures are not to blame for a decision by pharmaceutical giant Roche to halt delivery of cancer drugs to Greek public hospitals. The company warned Italy, Portugal and ...