The average wait times for patients to see a doctor in an emergency room have risen steadily over the past decade from about 38 minutes to almost an hour, according to new federal statistics released Wednesday.

Officials from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) say that the increase for ER waiting time is due to supply and demand. More and more people are turning to ERs, while the number of emergency departments is shrinking

- 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

Infant deaths directly related to preterm births have increased, especially for non-Hispanic black women, according to the Centers for Disease Control's National Center for Health Statistics.

African-Americans are 2.4 times as likely to die as infants, compared with white newborns. Among white children, the infant-mortality rate rose to 5.73 per 1,000 live births in 2005, compared with 5.66 in the previous year. Overall, the U.S. infant-mortality rate rose to 6.86 per 1,000 in 2005, from 6.78 in 2004, according to the data

British Health Secretary Alan Johnson, in a major speech, has asked the public to be kinder to obese Britons.

In a major speech, Johnson said vilifying the overweight would not spur the obese to amend their behavior. He said a campaign to encourage healthy eating must be done in a more intelligent and less hurtful manner

An international study, the Concord Report, comparing cancer survival rates in 31 nations for four types of cancer, shows that the U.S. topped survival rates for breast and prostate cancer, while for colorectal cancer, Japan led the men's category and France the women's category.

Canada ranked high in the four categories, indicating the good access rate of Canadian cancer patients to quality health care