An Indian court on Monday refused a mother's plea to abort a 26-week fetus with a serious heart defect, saying the law does not permit such late-term abortions.

The 31-year-old mother, Niketa Mehta, and her husband Haresh found out after 24 weeks that the fetus had a complete congenital heart blockage and malpositioned arteries that could, doctors told them, require a pacemaker implantation soon after birth

Although San Francisco's Department of Public Health was hit hard by budget cuts ordered by City Mayor Gavin Newsom, the city is still bent on improving the resident's health.

Aside from prohibiting the sale of cigarettes in drug stores, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors also mandated chain restaurants to post the calories, fat content and other nutritional information on their menu

- A new report released by the Center for Disease Control says that the rate of annual new H.I.V. infections in the United States are 40 percent higher than previously thought.

The study concludes that the infection rate is 56,300 per year as opposed to the 40,000 a year that was thought to have been the average rate for the last several years. The new findings, experts say, are not necessarily due to more infections, but are a result of improved tests and a more accurate and new statistical methods

Women ages 19 through 64 should be routinely tested for HIV. That's the new recommendation released Thursday by the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG).

In a formal committee opinion published in the August issue of Obstetrics and Gynecology, the college said obstetrician-gynecologists play an important role in promoting HIV screening for their patients under the recommendations by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)

An anticipated rise in health problems among Canadians, caused by climate change, has motivated Health Canada to urge the government to take immediate action.

In a 500-page report released Friday, the health agency forecasts more incidents of heat-related ailments, deaths due to outbreaks of infectious diseases unknown to the medical community, respiratory and cardiovascular disorders