The Zika virus is “spreading explosively” in the Americas, which could see up to 4 million cases over the next year, international health officials said Thursday, announcing a special meeting next week to decide if they should declare an international health emergency. The warning from the World Health Organization came… Read More

If you want to improve your sense of well-being, leave the Lower 48. A new report ranking all 50 states based on residents’ sense of well-being puts Hawaii at No. 1, followed by Alaska, which held the top spot last year. Hawaii has been No. 1 in the poll five… Read More

Health officials say a Virginia resident who traveled outside the United States has tested positive for Zika, a mosquito-transmitted virus. Health Commissioner Dr. Marissa Levine said Tuesday that the resident traveled to a country where the Zika virus transmission is ongoing. She says this person poses no risk to other… Read More

A decade after a group of smokers from Massachusetts sued Philip Morris USA to try to force the cigarette maker to pay for lung cancer screenings, the case will finally be heard by a jury. Smokers in the class-action lawsuit allege Philip Morris manufactured a defective cigarette knowing it could… Read More

Tuberculosis, a global scourge, has mostly been eradicated in the United States, but minorities and poor people who lack regular health care remain vulnerable. Marion, the town where Coretta Scott King was raised, is just that kind of community: the seat of Alabama’s poorest county, where 47 percent live in… Read More

Johnson & Johnson said Tuesday that it plans to cut about 3,000 jobs over the next two years as the health care conglomerate works to restructure its medical devices business. The New Brunswick, New Jersey, company said that amounts to more than 2 percent of its global workforce of around… Read More

The Supreme Court has rejected an appeal from the manufacturer of Children’s Motrin over a $63 million judgment awarded to a family whose daughter developed a life-threatening disease after taking the medicine. The justices on Tuesday let stand a lower court ruling that said Johnson & Johnson should pay the… Read More

Sierra Leone has identified more than 100 contacts of a new Ebola case that emerged in the West African nation’s north last week, and 28 of those people are at high risk, officials have said. Swabs from a 22-year-old woman who died last week tested positive for Ebola, Sierra Leone… Read More