Susan Brink

An outbreak of Middle East respiratory syndrome in South Korea has sent sales of surgical masks soaring.

When the deadly virus first appeared in the country in May, people started wearing masks just about everywhere — on the metro, at crowded malls and even at weddings — despite the ...

For years, Suzanne Petroni, senior director at the International Center for Research on Women, would speak — backed by mountains of evidence she studies — about the number one cause of death among women around the world: maternal mortality.

Then, in September, 2014, the World Health Organization released its report ...

We've always known that people around the world smoke, drink and use illegal drugs. But we've never known just how much people abuse substances, nor have we known whether illegal or legal drugs do more harm to human health — until now.

For the first time, researchers have combed through ...

How do you help a former captive reclaim her life?

That's the question mental health professionals face as they treat more than 200 women and children freed from the Islamist extremist group Boko Haram last Saturday in Nigeria.

According to reports, the majority of those rescued are children and a ...

For the first time since the Ebola virus was discovered in 1976, a woman has been found to have very likely contracted the virus through unprotected sex with a man who survived the disease.

A 44-year-old woman in Monrovia developed symptoms on March 14; Ebola was confirmed on March ...

Over the past six decades, China has been experimenting with radically different forms of health care systems.

As the country struggles to figure out the best way to get health care to 1.3 billion people, the rest of the world can learn from its past successes and failures, researchers

A decade ago in Nigeria, rumors spread that polio vaccines were surreptitious sterilization efforts. That led to a boycott of the vaccine in 2003 and a resurgence in the poliovirus three years later.

The story points up a key point about vaccines. Confidence is critical.

A new study of more ...

People sometimes ask Dr. Kunal Saha if he is married. His wife, Anuradha, died on May 28, 1998, and he has not taken a new wife. But Anuradha is still so wedded to Saha's thoughts, his heart and his life's mission that he feels no hesitation answering "yes."

To hear ...

An 82-year-old celibate Buddhist abbot from Cambodia has been diagnosed with HIV. His doctor was the cause: He was reusing syringes and infected a reported 272 individuals, including babies and children.

This horror story resonates around the world. More than 2 million people were infected in 2010 alone, according to ...

Each year, about 6 million people die from diseases that are preventable with vaccines. And about 1 in 5 children around the world don't have access to life-saving vaccines.

But those are cold and dry statistics.

The Art of Saving A Life enlisted more than 30 artists to create ...

Men seem to have an uncanny knack for loading a half-dozen suitcases and knapsacks into even the smallest compact car, turning the bags like puzzle pieces to arrive at the most efficient fit.

Many men also can get behind the wheel and, even if they get a little lost, manage ...

Robert F. Kennedy once said that GDP, or gross domestic product, "measures everything ... except that which makes life worthwhile."

GDP, in case you weren't paying attention in Econ 101, looks at economic activity as a way to size up how a country is doing.

RFK has a point. ...

The panic over Ebola in the U.S. gets a one-word comment from Gregg Gonsalves: "Crazy."

Actually, he has a few more words than that to say. In this week's online New England Journal of Medicine, Gonsalves co-authored an essay called "Panic, Paranoia, and Public Health — The AIDS Epidemic's ...

Love, respect, integration into communities, work, housing, food and clean water: That's what mentally ill people, like all human beings, need. Instead, in many parts of the developing world, people with mental illness are chained, nearly starved and even locked in a cage with a wild animal like a

Until now, no one knew exactly how many pregnant women in low- and middle-income countries used tobacco products. A report in The Lancet Global Health looks at 54 countries and finds some cause for relief. The rate of tobacco use among pregnant women in those countries averages about 3 ...

Electromagnetism can detect AIDS. The "Complete Cure Device" can wipe out the virus.

The Egyptian military made those claims earlier this year, but now they have backtracked after the announcement was widely denounced by scientists, including Egypt's own science adviser.

Nonetheless, people are still eager to believe the unbelievable. Egypt's ...

Reflecting unanimous agreement from a panel of experts, the World Health Organization said in a statement today that it is ethical to offer unproven drugs to treat or prevent the spread of the Ebola virus.

The panel, including ethicists, researchers, regulators and patient advocacy experts, met to consider ...

If prostitution were legal around the world, the transmission of HIV among female sex workers would go down by at least a third, according to a paper presented at the International AIDS Conference in Melbourne, Australia.

That would be a huge step forward. "[Female] sex workers face a disproportionately large ...