Australia could have a new mental health tax or a rise in the Medicare levy to pay for the massive costs of sweeping reform to the neglected sector under a new plan proposed by the Victorian government. The idea of using a higher Medicare levy or a whole new federal tax has been raised at meetings between Victoria and the ...

The coronavirus outbreak is widening worldwide with a spike in new cases in Iran, South Korea and Italy. Here at home, the Victorian chief medical officer, Dr Brett Sutton, says that a Coronavirus pandemic is very likely if not inevitable. It comes just days after a study in the New England Journal of Medicine confirmed that the virus causing the ...

Workers at the agency responsible for investigating the quality and safety of aged care facilities across the country have reported some of the lowest wellbeing levels in the public service, with fears high workloads are affecting their inspection capabilities. The Aged Care Quality and Safety Commission returned a wellbeing index of just 55 per cent in the 2019 census across ...

A group of Australia’s top environmental health experts say the entire country should provide real-time air quality reporting, in the wake of summer’s unprecedented bushfire season. In a paper published in the Medical Journal of Australia today, the researchers say public access to user-friendly air quality information is essential for managing personal exposure to smoke. Over December and last month, ...

In South Korea, Singapore and Iran, clusters of infections are leading to a jump in cases of the new viral illness outside China. But it’s not the numbers that are worrying experts: It’s that increasingly they can’t trace where the clusters started. World Health Organization officials said China’s crackdown on parts of the country bought time for the rest of ...

President Abdel Fatah al-Sissi of Egypt was in Washington this week, and the headlines of Egyptian newspapers and media channels — and also those from the White House — are emphasizing cooperation and shared interests in the region. Predictably, up until the Trump-Sissi Oval Office meeting, there had been absolutely no mention of Sissi’s moves to consolidate power through constitutional amendments and Egypt’s democratic struggles. This ...

First things first: yoga is not about being ridiculously flexible or standing on your head. In fact, centuries before Instagram and activewear, “doing yoga” didn’t involve the body at all. At its core, yoga is a practice for tapping into your mind and poses are just one way of doing that. Yoga’s philosophy is based on eight limbs; only one ...

KALAHAN DENG Three years of civil war in South Sudan have driven thousands of families into the marshes of the Nile to hide from the fighting. A famine has been declared some parts. The BBC’s Alastair Leithead has been to the rebel-held town Thonyor in Leer County, where people have been told to gather to get help. They emerged from ...

KALAHAN DENG Asnake that had swallowed a tennis ball had to have the item massaged out of its gut by a vet, after it was found by a snake catcher in Townsville, Australia. The 1.5m carpet python was taken to a local vet surgery on Monday by local snake handler, Brian West. “Maybe everyone six months we’ll find ones with ...

“Trapped” and feeling like a “monster” is how one young person has described their struggle with mental health. They were just one of more than 50,000 children and young people who turned to Childline last year because of a serious mental health problem. New data from the NSPCC shows one in six Childline counselling sessions is now about serious mental ...