The Australian doctor who fled to Syria to join ISIS has hit out at claims he was brainwashed into making the move in an open letter.

The death of Jim Nicholls on the operating table was the fifth gallbladder case in two years that drew attention to surgeon Michael Parry.

Trekkers on Base Camp, many being experienced adventure seekers, relive their experiences of Nepal's earthquake.

A Kiwi anaesthetist volunteering in quake-ravaged Nepal says the most heart-wrenching sights are the things he can't help with - providing food and shelter.

A breakthrough by New Zealand scientists could lead to a vaccine to treat a ghastly disease which mostly affects the poorest in the world.

An Australian doctor branded the "new face" of Isis tried to get into medical school in New Zealand, but failed after a year and left the country.

Slouching on the sofa watching movies often isn't the best way to get study done, but for medical students, a trip to the DVD store can be good for grades.

The painkiller routinely prescribed to people with lower back pain may not only be unhelpful, it may actually be causing harm.

Medical suppliers' payments to doctors should be opened to public scrutiny, say a group of health and science experts.

Kiwis have slower and less access to the newest and most innovative medicines than their OECD counterparts, according to a report out this week.

It must be one of the weirdest health care procedures on offer and it just keeps getting weirder. Its clinical name: faecal transplantation.

Kerre McIvor writes: This week, an Aussie medical council made public a report concluding homeopathy is not effective for treating any medical condition. In effect, it's bunkum.

Jim Cleland has performed makeshift surgery on his Great Barrier Island dining room table, but now it's time to sell the $2m holiday home.

Pain-killing skin patches, prescribed for chronic pain and cancer care, can be deadly to children, health experts warn.

A doctor has been criticised for issuing a repeat prescription for antidepressants without a second face-to-face consultation with the patient, a young man who later took his own life.

Controversial anti-flu drug Tamiflu has been found to be useful, in the latest scientific study, at reducing the impact of influenza and keeping people out of hospital.

Kiwis with cancer die from the disease sooner than Australian cancer patients, research shows, with some of the larger survival gaps in lung, liver and ovarian cancer.

Patients too often suffer in vain attempts to prolong life, because of the mandate to "do everything" for patients.

If we treated people with diabetes the way we treat those with depression, there would be an outcry, says the new president of the Royal College of Psychiatrists.

A bill which would legalise voluntary euthanasia has been dropped by Labour MP Iain Lees-Galloway at the request of his leader Andrew Little.

A 10-year-old schoolgirl has caught the attention of Kiwi inventor Sir Ray Avery with a touching letter asking about his tough childhood.

It took months of planning, a nine-hour surgery and a team of 35 clinicians. But by the end, they had completed a ground-breaking double arm transplant on a quadruple amputee.

It costs drugmakers US$2.56 billion to bring a new medicine to market - more than double the price of 11 years ago.

A doctor from Sierra Leone with United States residency infected with Ebola may travel to the US to be treated for the deadly virus, medical officials say.

A man who tried to attend a $646 seminar held by a church offering a controversial cure for Ebola says he was turned away for offering a smaller donation.

Scientists from one of the world's leading institutes of tropical medicine, which first discovered the Ebola virus in the 1970s, flew out to Guinea yesterday to begin ground-breaking research into a possible cure.