According to a report by the Japanese Cabinet Office, approximately 3 million people in the country suffer from mental illness and related diseases. It is for the first time since 2005 that the number of mentally disabled people topped 3 million.

Approximately 3.028 million Japanese were diagnosed with mental illness. Japan's population in 2005 was 127 million. The last such data on people with disabilities was issued in 2002

The United Nations (U.N.) health agency has organized mass meningitis vaccinations for four African countries (Burkina Faso, Sudan, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Uganda), according to a U.N. News report on March 16.

The outbreaks of meningitis in these countries have killed 1,670 people so far, with nearly another 16,000 people who have already been infected

The consensus of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC's) report: almost 80 percent of Americans aged 65 years and older have at least one chronic health disease (for instance, heart disease, diabetes, arthritis or depression). Nearly 40 percent of the elderly population have at least two chronic conditions.

The CDC's report on "The State of Aging and Health in America 2007" was supported by The Merck Company Foundation in its fifth volume series of aging and health in America, including other regions of the world

The Centers for Disease Control & Prevention (CDC) announced Monday that $3.7 million has been awarded in new grants to improve public health and the sharing of information for disease detection. This incluldes responses to public health threats that may emerge.

These grants will fund the studies at three new Centers of Excellence in Public Health Informatics. These centers are located at the New York City Department of Health and Hygeine, the University of Utah in Salt Lake City and Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore

A new study by Taiwanese researchers has warned would-be-mothers of the potential risks of eating fish during pregnancy. The study found that eating fish more than three times a week during pregnancy could lead to higher levels of mercury in newborn babies, which in turn can prove fatal.

In the study conducted on small sample of women living in the city of Taipei in Taiwan, researchers found that blood extracted from the umbilical cord had an average of around 9.1 microgram/l of mercury, much higher than doctors say is healthy. The concentration of mercury in cord blood was also higher than that of what was found in the mother's blood