Health

Bed numbers and nursing staff at Wakari Hospital's specialist rehabilitation service (Isis) will be cut to deal with a funding shortfall, a Southern District Health Board staff consultation document says.

Public donations have helped the neurosurgery campaign reach its halfway goal, with more than $1.5 million raised.

The health of patients who take part in treatment trials may be put in danger by Government changes to ethics committees, a group of academics says.

Nutritionists have labelled the increasing size of slices and cakes sold in cafes as frustrating and a "big problem", but one Dunedin establishment has a satisfying answer.

Imagine being 5 years old, hearing the sound of an oncoming truck, and not knowing from which direction it was coming.

People who may have forgotten they gave consent for their newborn baby's blood spots to be used in research after screening for metabolic disorders will not be contacted to see if they are still happy with that decision.

Concerns have been raised in an independent report, and by experts and providers, about the sustainability of a national breast-screening service. Elspeth McLean reports.

A "Golden age" of vaccines is already greatly reducing child deaths from infectious disease in Africa, leading international vaccine pioneer Prof Myron Levine says.

If Queenstown Medical Centre knew selling Lakes District Hospital land was near impossible due to the "quagmire of covenants" reported by the National Health Board (NHB), the centre would have dismissed the Southern District Health Board's (DHB) request to put on hold plans for a private hospital with Southern Cross, while it investigated the possibility of moving the public hospital to the same site at Remarkables Park in a health-campus joint venture, a spokesman says.

University of Otago scientists have made a big advance in their efforts to combat tuberculosis and other infectious diseases by taking delivery of a state-of-the-art containment laboratory.