A Swedish-Ugandan study has found that mosquito nets can be used as an inexpensive alternative to costly surgical meshes in fixing common groin hernias, Stockholm's Karolinska Institute announced Thursday.

"Commercial hernia meshes cost $100 or more, which is too much for the health services and people living in poor countries," said Jenny Lofgren, a researcher for the study published in the New England Journal of Medicine.

Turkmenistan's authorities have forced shops to stop selling cigarettes, traders in Ashgabat said Thursday, after its president urged citizens to kick the habit. 

State anti-narcotics officials "came to our shop recently and forced us to remove cigarettes from the shelves, threatening us with huge fines," said Bairam Saryev, the 34-year-old owner of a small store in the capital.

The World Health Organization (WHO) announced Thursday that the Ebola epidemic that has ravaged west Africa for two years was over after Liberia, the last affected country, received the all-clear.

"Today the World Health Organization declares the end of the most recent outbreak of Ebola virus disease in Liberia and says all known chains of transmission have been stopped in West Africa," the U.N. health agency said.

Saa Mathias Lenoh, a high school student in the Guinean capital Conakry, says he's "learning to smile little by little," like thousands of other youngsters orphaned by Ebola in west Africa.

According to the United Nations, more than 22,000 children lost at least one parent to the deadliest Ebola outbreak in history whose epicentre lay in the west African countries of Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia.

The United States will launch a "moonshot" effort to cure cancer, President Barack Obama declared Tuesday, assigning his deputy Joe Biden to lead the effort.

Comparing the scale of the challenge to the successful U.S. mission to put an astronaut on the moon, Obama said the drive would receive the same effort as clean energy research. 

Women 50 and older should get a mammogram to screen for breast cancer every two years, while women in their 40s should decide with their doctors, said U.S. guidelines Monday.

The newest recommendations by the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force stoked new controversy over what is best for women, who not long ago were urged to get a mammogram every year starting at age 40.

Three people have died of swine flu in Armenia since the start of the year, the country's health ministry said Monday, after an outbreak in neighboring Iran left more than 100 dead.

"All the people who died from the H1N1 virus suffered complications after having sought medical attention too late or already suffered from other diseases," ministry spokeswoman Anahit Haytayan told Agence France Presse.

At least 10 people have died and over 1,000 fallen sick with cholera in an outbreak among Somali refugees in the world's largest refugee camp in Kenya, U.N. officials said Saturday.

The outbreak began in November in the Dadaab camp complex in northeastern Kenya, home to some 350,000 Somali refugees, said Osman Yussuf Ahmed, from the U.N. refugee agency, UNHCR.

Guidelines on alcohol intake for men have been slashed by a third in new advice issued by Britain's chief medical officers Friday.

Men are now being told they should drink only 14 units of alcohol per week, the same as for women and down from the previous level of 21 units.

New York officially launches marijuana as a form of medical treatment Thursday, becoming the 23rd U.S. state to do so as the taboo surrounding its legalized medicinal use starts to shift.

Under the legislation, five companies are authorized to grow marijuana for medicinal purposes in the state, but only one -- Bloomfield Industries -- has set up headquarters in New York City itself.