New Zealand's leading cot death expert will urge Health Minister Jonathan Coleman to fund safe sleep bassinets in a private meeting today.

Behaviour by supporters of women in labour have prompted calls at one hospital delivery suite to limit the number of family members attending a birth.

Fast-acting parents are thought to have curbed the spread of whooping cough from a Christchurch primary school.

Applications for a share of a new $7.9 million research fund to improve the treatment of conditions like diabetes and asthma have opened.

Parents of a 9-year-old boy have been threatened with prosecution unless they send him to a special boarding school 300km from their home.

Photos have revealed the squalid conditions in which an autistic man is being kept "like a caged animal" at a disability care unit in the Waikato.

No New Zealander is too disabled to belong in a family, to have a home and to be treated with dignity, yet this is exactly what is happening to Ashley Peacock.

The Human Rights Commission will bring an international expert to New Zealand to investigate the country's use of seclusion after repeatedly raising concerns.

The lack of clarity around patient seclusion has emerged after the Herald revealed the case of autistic man Ashley Peacock, who has been keep in isolation for years.

The Government today top-up after subcontractor prices came back higher than expected.

An extra $2.2 billion will be pumped into health over four years to help cope with an ageing population and record immigration.

Hundreds of patients are waiting for elective surgery and at some hospitals higher levels of pain are being demanded just to get on the list.

Families who have struggled through the bureaucratic red tape to gain permission to use medicinal cannabis say the costs remain too high a hurdle for too many.

A nurse who made a false insurance claim and stole drugs has avoided being struck off the profession's register.

Report finds 280,000 New Zealanders are waiting for elective surgery - with more than half of those people not even on official waiting lists.

The health-care industry has turned into a juicy target for cybercriminals.

The Government's message to melanoma petitioners at Parliament today is to wait for the Budget when Pharmac will almost certainly get an increase in its funding.

Documents released to the Labour Party showed the funding gap at these DHBs ranged between $500,000 and nearly $2 million.

Covering for the local doctor while they are away on holiday can be big shoes to fill - especially if you are a nurse.

To demand "savings" from the country's district health boards is good economics but brave politics.

New Zealand fathers-to-be are nearly twice as likely as their pregnant partners to be undecided about immunisation before their child is born.

Just over two years ago, 47-year-old Teresa Burt was lying in Middlemore Hospital on life support, her family fearing she would never wake up.

Education consultant Jayne-Ann Young has dedicated more than half her life to making the lives of young people better.

The 54-year-old is one of about 4000 Kiwis living with a form of MS - a disorder of the central nervous system that affects the brain, spinal cord and optic nerves.

Women are typically the dominant group within medical schools and yet remain under-represented in leadership positions.

From arm wrestling gone wrong to flying pocket knives, DHBs have reported on "adverse events" affecting 525 patients in the year to June.

An adverse event is an incident that caused serious harm or death, or could have done so.