The bacterial contamination suspected in the deaths of three babies in Mainz last weekend was not the result of poor hospital practices but probably caused by a single bottle dirtied during transport, officials announced Friday.
One infant remained critically ill on Monday after tubing contaminated with bacteria likely caused the deaths of two other children at a hospital in Mainz over the weekend.
People who refuse to pay additional top-up money to their statutory health insurer face fines of up to €225 under reforms being considered by the federal government, media reported Wednesday.
A doctor who killed an English patient with a massive morphine overdose is to face a “fit for practice” hearing that could mean he is finally stripped of his German licence, medical authorities confirmed Thursday.
A German advertising agency is pushing the “beauty is skin deep” adage to the limit with a promotional calendar for radiologists featuring 12 “bone bunnies” – X-ray images of skeletal pin-up girls.
As Germany's government looks to fine-tune the country’s costly health care system, some government experts are suggesting that insurers stop covering homeopathy, a form of alternative medicine, according to a report on Saturday.
Doctors have been given the green light to gene test IVF embryos for hereditary illnesses after a landmark court decision clearing a Berlin fertility specialist over his use of the controversial technique.
The murky legal territory of “designer babies” will go under the microscope Tuesday when a Leipzig court examines a fertility doctor’s gene testing of embryos from couples with hereditary risk of illness.
The sons of a British man killed by an overdose administered by a German locum doctor in 2008 have been taken into police custody after confronting him at a medical conference, media reports said on Monday.
Healthcare in Germany is better than in most countries, but patients are facing increasing costs and political doctoring. Ben Knight gives the system a check-up for Berlin’s English-language magazine Exberliner.
Health Minister Philipp Rösler came under heavy criticism on Wednesday for his suggestion to create a university quota to encourage medical students to become country doctors in rural areas struggling to treat their populations.
To deal with a looming doctor shortage in Germany, Health Minister Philipp Rösler called on Sunday for medical schools to broaden the way they accept students – including less emphasis on school grades.
Germany’s ruling Christian Democrats (CDU) have proposed a sweeping price freeze on prescription drugs for three years, according to a report published by the <i>Süddeutsche Zeitung</i> daily on Saturday.
More than 200 people who had artificial hip replacements at a Freiburg clinic will have to go under the knife once again due to faulty implants, the RkK regional hospital association reported on Monday.
Researchers at the University Medical Centre Hamburg-Eppendorf (UKE) won a national contest on Thursday to further develop their so-called “nano-fishing” cancer treatment, a method which aims to pluck cancer cells from a patient’s bloodstream.
The German Health Ministry on Wednesday set up a new online portal offering information about swine flu to compliment its no longer free telephone hotline.
German politicians say they’re concerned about the spiralling cost of health care. But as Hannah Cleaver reports, they also appear content to let pharmaceutical firms charge far more for medication that is cheaper elsewhere.
Berlin police said on Monday they have issued an arrest warrant for a 50-year-old doctor who conducted a drug-fuelled group therapy session that ended in two deaths and several poisonings.
The German Medical Association has called upon the new government to step up work to address a future shortfall in doctors, as two-thirds of German clinics look for new medical staff, and 75,000 doctors approach retirement by 2017.
Tutogen Medical GmbH, a Bavarian company specialised in human tissue implants, is being investigated by state prosecutors for illegally trading in body parts from Ukrainian corpses.
Doctors in Germany have successfully implanted the world's smallest artificial heart pump, billed as more effective and unobtrusive than earlier devices, a hospital in Heidelberg said.
A new programme called “Discovering Hands” is training blind women to use their developed tactile skills to detect breast cancer earlier and more precisely than doctors, news magazine <i>Der Spiegel</i> reported on Wednesday.
Lions, giraffes, tigers, rabbits, bears, rhinoceroses and even owls can go blind from cataracts. But as AFP’s Deborah Cole reports, an eastern German firm has an answer: custom-made "contact lenses."
