NHS urged to respond to growing health dangers of chemsex

Gay men describe how they became dependent on heavy drug use at group sex parties, as alarm is raised over lack of coordinated response

‘It was the scariest thing I’ve ever done’: the Irish women forced to travel for abortions

Every year, thousands of women come from Ireland to England for abortions – illegal at home, and punishable in Northern Ireland by life imprisonment. These are their stories

Mindfulness has huge health potential – but McMindfulness is no panacea

Britain’s robust cross-party parliamentary report on the benefits of mindfulness is a model to legislators across the developed world: this ‘way of being’ is no quick fix

Profit, not patients: the risks of private medicine

Ultimately, private providers have their shareholders’ interests at heart, not their patients’. A GP and celebrated writer shares his experiences of how the healthcare system works

The Guardian view on endometriosis: a silent source of unnecessary misery

Editorial: Not life-threatening, but life-altering: the disease that neither its victims nor medicine know enough about

The high rate of uninsured Latinos isn’t surprising – it’s business as usual

A health insurance disparity existed before the Affordable Care Act, and the government should have seen that as evidence of a need to work differently

The unlikely saviour of the NHS: drug-resistant gonorrhoea

The epic challenges of the post-antibiotic age will take the debate beyond the well-worn issues of obesity and old age

The Secret Doctor: people would use the NHS less if they knew the true price tags

A survey shows people vastly underestimate NHS costs. If they understood the real expenditure, they might use the service more responsibly

My wife’s £10,000 bill for cancer treatment makes me appreciate the NHS

Faced with the huge cost of vital healthcare in South Africa, I’ve realised how lucky we are to have the NHS in the UK. We must fight to protect it

How many people should watch you give birth? The crowdbirthing conundrum

Women in their teens and 20s have an average of eight people in the room during the course of giving birth, a survey suggests – it might work for some, but there are a few key questions to consider