Afghanistan launched a polio vaccination campaign on Monday aimed at reaching children in areas previously controlled by Islamic State group militants, officials said.

Afghanistan and Pakistan are the only two countries in the world where polio remains endemic -- a fact blamed on opposition to immunisation by Islamist groups, who claim the vaccines are a conspiracy to sterilise Muslims or a cover for spying.

Singapore on Sunday reported 40 more cases of locally transmitted Zika virus infections, most of them foreign workers at a construction site.

Donated blood should be tested for the Zika virus, which can cause birth defects, US regulators warned amid a mounting outbreak of the mosquito-borne disease in the United States.

All donated blood should undergo tests for the Zika virus, which can cause birth defects, U.S. regulators said Friday amid a mounting outbreak of the mosquito-borne virus in the United States.

"There is still much uncertainty regarding the nature and extent of Zika virus transmission," said Peter Marks, director of the Food and Drug Administration's Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research.

Asia's population is ageing faster than anywhere in the world, a study said Thursday, warning the swelling ranks of the elderly will cost the region $20 trillion in healthcare by 2030.

Israeli scientists have uncovered how the most severe form of skin cancer spreads to other organs in a discovery that could revolutionize treatment of the disease, they said Tuesday.

U.S. Food and Drug Administration tests found hepatitis A in scallops from the Philippines, which have been identified as the likely source of an outbreak of the virus in Hawaii.

The Hawaii Department of Health announced Thursday the FDA laboratory test results of frozen Sea Port Bay Scallops. They're produced by De Oro Resources Inc. Messages left with the company's main office in the Philippines weren't immediately returned.

Victims' advocates hailed as vindication Thursday the United Nations' acknowledgment it played a role in a devastating cholera epidemic believed to have been imported by U.N. peacekeepers.

The epidemic has killed 10,000 people since it broke out in 2010 in the vicinity of a base housing U.N. peacekeepers, in a country that previously was considered cholera-free.

At least 13 people died Wednesday, a local official said, after they apparently drank toxic homemade liquor in India's eastern Bihar -- despite a state-wide ban on alcohol.

With infertility rising in pollution-plagued Iran, a growing number of couples must navigate the country's web of social and religious taboos as they seek treatment.