Over half of Japan’s parents now feed newborns nothing but breast milk — the first time this has been observed in three decades, according to a Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry survey. “Efforts to promote breast-feeding have paid off,” a ministry official said Wednesday. ...
The Kumamoto Municipal Government said 13 infants were left in the baby hatch at Jikei Hospital in fiscal 2015. In all, 125 babies have now been rescued via the facility, Japan’s first, in its nine years of existence, it said Tuesday. The facility allows ...
Overweight or obese women give birth to larger babies, says new research that could make some pregnant women think twice before reaching for that box of ice cream. Mothers with high blood sugar or diabetes, even within a healthy range, also tend to have ...
One in 29 babies born in Japan in 2014 had at least one non-Japanese parent, a Kyodo News analysis of government data found, increasing the need to provide language support to such families at schools and medical facilities. Of the 1.02 million babies born ...
Sharing bacteria in the operating room normally is a no-no but in a novel experiment, U.S. researchers are giving babies born by C-section a dose of presumably protective germs from the mother’s birth canal. Humans share their bodies with microbes — on the skin, ...
The suspected number of cases of microcephaly, a rare brain defect in babies, continues to rise in Brazil, reaching 3,893 since authorities began investigating the surge in October, Health Ministry officials said Wednesday. Fewer than 150 cases of microcephaly were seen in the country ...
Genetically modified mosquitoes could help Brazil combat the Zika virus, tests results released Tuesday by a British biotech firm suggest. The South American nation has been scrambling to contain the spread of Zika, which has been linked to a recent surge in birth defects ...
Jamaica’s health minister is advising women to delay plans to become pregnant for the next six to 12 months due to the mosquito-borne Zika virus. The island has not even recorded any cases of Zika, which is spreading in the Americas and is suspected ...
Roughly 7 percent of 3-year-olds are sleep-deprived, getting less than 10 hours of sleep a day, due partly to parents coming home from work later than before, according to a government study. The Environment Ministry study covering more than 100,000 children also found that ...
Babies of women who continued smoking after becoming pregnant were born an average 100 grams lighter than those born to women who did not smoke, according to findings in a landmark survey. The results of the survey, the first large-scale nationwide study of its ...
A sign marking a place where parents can change their baby’s diapers or rest while feeding them is spreading nationwide as local authorities roll out increasing numbers of such facilities. The sign was created by the Kitakyushu Municipal Government, Fukuoka Prefecture. It marks a ...
More than 600 babies wriggled to the finish line on their hands and knees in the world’s largest crawling competition Monday. Publisher Benesse organized the one-day event at a shopping mall in Yokohama, inviting infants aged from 6 to 16 months to participate in ...
