Categories: Health

U.S. Stem Cell Ruling May Boost Asian Research

Posted by: Bruce Einhorn on August 24

Asian countries are well-positioned to benefit from the latest setback for stem cell research in the U.S. During the Bush years, countries such as Singapore and China took advantage of...

Japan Wants To Build Medical Tourism Market

Posted by: Kenji Hall on July 27

Japan's government has come up with a not-so-new idea for creating jobs in its healthcare sector: competing for medical tourists against Singapore, Thailand, the Philippines and India. For months, a...

Shanghai World Expo Says "No" to Tobacco Sponsor

Posted by: Frederik Balfour on July 21

Organizers of the Shanghai World Expo in 2010 have canceled a sponsorship deal for the China pavilion by Chinese cigarette maker Shanghai Tobacco in response to outcry by China's growing...

Could BAT's Indonesian Investment Help Anti-Smoking Efforts?

Posted by: Frederik Balfour on June 17

It was only a matter of time before British American Tobacco would follow Philip Morris International's lead and invest in Indonesia. BAT has announced it's paying $495 million for an...

Swine Flu Infection in China Raises Fears

Posted by: Dexter Roberts on May 11

Just when fears of a pandemic seemed to be abating, China has reported its first case. On May 11, the government announced that it had quarantined a 30-year-old man suspected...

China Fines Non-Smokers

Posted by: Frederik Balfour on May 10

Here's an interesting twist on smoking and fines: in Gongan county of China's Hubei province, local authorities have imposed fines on civil servants who don't smoke their fair share of...

U.S. Backlash Against China's 'Stupid' Swine Flu Policy

Posted by: Bruce Einhorn on May 07

You know you have a good backlash brewing when Sen. Chuck Grassley weighs in. The Iowa Republican, who hit the headlines during the uproar over the AIG bonuses by saying...

Swine Flu and a China-Mexico Brouhaha

Posted by: Dexter Roberts on May 05

An airplane from Mexico is landing in China today in hopes of beginning to unravel a diplomatic brouhaha involving the two countries. After first stopping in Shanghai, it reportedly will...

Swine Flu Finally Hits Hong Kong

Posted by: Bruce Einhorn on May 04

The swine flu outbreak has thrown many of my Hong Kong neighbors off their stride. Hong Kong, after all, is used to being at center stage of global health scares....

Macao Should Ban Smoking in Casinos

Posted by: Frederik Balfour on May 03

At first glance, the move by Macao authorities to increase the excise tax on cigarettes by 300% sounds like a big victory for health advocates. The Framework Convention for Tobacco...

China Acts Swiftly in New Baby Formula Scare

Posted by: Frederik Balfour on April 07

China has shown it can act very quickly to protect the public from tainted foods when it wants to---and when there are no vested domestic interests at stake. According to...

China Bird Flu Update

Posted by: Frederik Balfour on February 06

First the good news. The Chinese Ministry of Agriculture told the China Daily there have been no reports of bird flu outbreak among poultry since January in the provinces where...

Is China Covering up a New Bird Flu Epidemic?

Posted by: Frederik Balfour on February 03

Is China covering up a new outbreak of bird flu? Certainly there seems to be very strong evidence it is. There have already been eight reported cases of humans...

Two Chinese Get Death Penalty for Tainted Milk Scandal

Posted by: Frederik Balfour on January 23

The newspaper photographs taken on Jan. 22 of a weeping woman whose granddaughter died from melamine-tainted milk in China last year provided stark and heartbreaking contrast to another grim image...

The Major Flaw in China's Melamine Crackdown

Posted by: Bruce Einhorn on November 20

Finally, some additional numbers from the Chinese government about the extent of the poisoned milk scandal. According to the Ministry of Health, 50,741 Chinese children sickened by the tainted milk...

China's Latest Spin on Melamine Scandal

Posted by: Bruce Einhorn on November 03

With worries growing about melamine spreading from milk to eggs to other parts of the food supply, Minister Sun Zhengcai is doing his best to put an upbeat spin on...

Wal-Mart Pulls Tainted Eggs from Shelves in China

Posted by: Frederik Balfour on October 30

The bad news for China's food industry just won't stop, and you have to wonder what tainted product will be uncovered next. First we had melamine added to mainland produced...

China’s Milk Scandal Isn’t Over

Posted by: Bruce Einhorn on October 23

The Chinese milk scandal is not just a milk scandal anymore. The chemical keeps showing up in other Chinese-made foods: Yesterday came news South Korea is destroying tons of egg...

China Milk Scandal Update: Nestle Hits Back

Posted by: Bruce Einhorn on October 02

The poisoned milk scandal keeps spreading. Today Taiwanese government officials yanked Nestle products from store shelves after tests showed trace amounts of melamine, the industrial chemical added to Chinese milk....

Tainted Chinese Milk Producers try damage control

Posted by: Frederik Balfour on September 30

It sounds like China desperately needs a truth in advertising law. Some Chinese milk producers implicated in the melamine contamination are attempting damage control by running ads that simply ignore...

More on China’s awful milk scandal

Posted by: Bruce Einhorn on September 25

Alarmed by the news from China, more countries are banning the import of products containing Chinese milk. The latest: South Korea. The French are taking matters even further: They’re banning...

China's Poisoned Milk Scandal Spreads

Posted by: Bruce Einhorn on September 22

The American financial crisis may be dominating the headlines in most of the world, but in China the top story is the scandal involving milk contaminated with the industrial chemical...

Chinese again victimized by poisoned products

Posted by: Bruce Einhorn on September 17

The scandal surrounding China's tainted milk once again is calling attention to the shoddy state of consumer protection in China. During the big Made-in-China scares last year surrounding tainted Chinese-made...

Medical tourism: Thailand Troubles Could Lift Philippines

Posted by: Bruce Einhorn on September 02

A few days ago, columnist Tony Lopez wrote an Op-Ed piece in the Manila Times complaining about a new report on medical tourism from Deloitte. The report talks about Asian...

Taiwan Joins Medical Tourism Bandwagon

Posted by: Bruce Einhorn on August 26

Now it's the Taiwanese who want to get into the medical-tourism business. Till now, hospitals in Singapore, Thailand and India have been the most aggressive in trying to attract patients...

From the BBC: ‘Condom, Condom’ Ad in India

Posted by: Bruce Einhorn on August 20

Check out this funny video from the BBC World Service Trust, the charitable arm of the British broadcaster. In case you can’t access the 55-second video, it shows an Indian...

Supersize China: Obesity climbing fast

Posted by: Frederik Balfour on July 10

Thank goodness the sedan chair is no longer in fashion. Earlier this week the health policy journal Health Affairs came out with an article based on a study that found...

Flu Deja Vu in Hong Kong

Posted by: Bruce Einhorn on March 12

Five years after the SARS outbreak shut down Hong Kong, there's a new flu scare in the city. Over the past fews weeks, four young children have died after coming...