Islamabad

ISLAMABAD - A 17-year-old Pakistani girl, who had been very sick for the past few months and turned into a boy after a sex-change operation, is grateful to be healthy and alive now and said post-operation: "I don't care about whether I am a boy or a girl as long as I am alive." Farzana, who was critically ill, was taken to a hospital in Lahore from Rahim Yar Khan city in Punjab province.

ISLAMABAD - Pakistan could face an increase in the number of breast cancer patients in the future because of the unhealthy lifestyle led by most women as well as late diagnosis of the disease, a US health expert has said.

ISLAMABAD - District health officials in Pakistan are "not very keen" to use swine flu vaccines donated by the World Health Organisation (WHO), thus resulting in the country's failure to control the disease, the WHO has said.

ISLAMABAD - The Pakistan Army has dismissed the report about Afghan Taliban leader Mullah Omar's surgery in Karachi with the help of Pakistan's spy agency as "unfounded and concocted".

ISLAMABAD - Despite being banned in Pakistan, alcohol is easily available across the country, prompting rising alcoholism and a growing trade in clinics trying to treat middle-class patients.