Kiwis are getting healthier, but New Zealand still faces serious health issues, especially in the most deprived areas.

It's ten years today since smoking was banned in bars, but Maori are still more likely to smoke than Europeans. We map where the ethnic smoking gap lies.

Doctors question if an already stretched workforce can cope with the govt's ambitious target to treat every cancer patient within two months.

Nearly every cancer patient will have to receive treatment within 62 days under an ambitious three-year plan outlined by the Government today.

About 200 cruise ship passengers have been confined to their cabins after the norovirus bug struck the Dawn Princess while on a trip around New Zealand.

New Zealand and Australia have abandoned efforts to establish a joint therapeutic products regulator.

NZ medics will be sent to Sierra Leone to work with Ebola patients as part of a joint Anzac effort with Australia.

A discredited claim that the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine causes autism and bowel disease could be the reason for the spread of measles in the latest outbreak.

Auckland has become the nation's first city to ban under-18s from using sunbeds, and commercial sunbed operators will now need a licence.

Kiwis attempting to sidestep doctor’s fees while holidaying in Australia could soon be turned away from Sydney hospitals.

Personal medical records - including prescription history, laboratory results and personal details - will soon be made available online to patients and their health care professionals.

A taxpayer-funded South Auckland disability support provider which received $30 million last year is investigating its own accounts.

Three patients lost their lives after St John's life-saving defibrillators failed in a blunder linked to the ambulance service's poor record keeping.

When media report the method in which somebody ends their own life, it can result in copycat suicide, the Law Commission says.

Health officials are concerned clusters of the harmful H1N1 virus, responsible for the 2009 swine flu pandemic, are appearing unseasonably early.

The Ministry of Health has written to school principals advising them to ensure all pupils, parents and staff are immunised against measles as an outbreak threatens to sweep the country.

The death of a 6-week old Christchurch baby from whooping cough in 2012 was preventable, a coroner has concluded.

The collapse of the Southern District Health Board's computer system could affect elective surgery and other procedures at Dunedin Hospital.

Rest home staff who left an elderly woman's broken hip untreated for several days have been ordered to apologise and will be reviewed by the Nursing Council.

Kiwis are 'dying from embarrassment' because of a reluctance to speak with doctors about bowel cancer symptoms as NZ tops a report into global bowel cancer rates