Around 800,000 Indian pharmacies downed their shutters Wednesday to demand a crackdown on online drug sales, which they say is unregulated and eroding their business.

The one-day strike is aimed at curbing India's burgeoning online drug retail industry, which the All India Organization of Chemists and Druggists (AIOCD) says is putting customers at risk by failing to follow existing rules.

After years of crippling debt, Bangladeshi villager Rawshan Ara decided to follow in her family's footsteps -- and sell a kidney on the black market to raise cash.

Like many of her neighbour in this poor farming area, the 28-year-old easily found a local broker and quickly became a victim of Bangladesh's thriving but illegal organ trade.

Seeking to douse a months-long scandal over providing fetal tissue for research, women's healthcare giant Planned Parenthood said Tuesday it will no longer accept reimbursements for costs of the donations.

The move is aimed at debunking what the group calls a "disingenuous argument" by critics attacking Planned Parenthood over the procedure.

A South Korean man believed cured of Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) has been rediagnosed with the deadly virus, health officials said Tuesday.

The diagnosis deals a blow to Seoul's hopes of being declared free of a disease that has infected 186 people in South Korea, killing 36 of them, since its outbreak in May.

A British nurse who was successfully treated in January after contracting Ebola in Sierra Leone was back in a specialist hospital Friday due to an "unusual late complication" with the virus.

Pauline Cafferkey, who voluntarily went to the west African country to treat Ebola patients, was flown from a Glasgow hospital to London's Royal Free Hospital, which houses Britain's only isolation ward for the lethal disease.

A hepatitis C scare linked to four deaths so far in Singapore widened Friday after its largest hospital said nearly 1,000 patients and health staff need to be screened for the virus.

The state-run Singapore General Hospital said 678 patients as well as 273 medical workers were being contacted to be screened for the virus, local media reported, double the number initially estimated to be affected.

A simple blood test can reduce unneccessary hospital admissions by pinpointing people seeking medical help for chest pain caused by something other than a heart attack, a study said Thursday.

Researchers said they had identified the optimal level of a protein called troponin in the blood below which a heart attack can be all but ruled out as the cause of chest pain.

Understanding how our cells repair damaged DNA, a breakthrough which earned the Nobel Chemistry Prize on Wednesday, could make cancer treatment more effective, experts say.

By revealing how our cells automatically fix DNA mutations which can lead to illness, the discovery opened the door to significantly improving chemotherapy's effectiveness against cancer, which kills some eight million people worldwide each year.

An Australian cancer survivor Wednesday triumphed in a landmark challenge against biotech companies, with the country's top court ruling they could not patent a gene linked to breast cancer.

Yvonne D'Arcy took her case to the High Court of Australia, arguing that the so-called breast cancer gene BRCA1 -- the mutation famously carried by Hollywood star Angelina Jolie -- was a naturally occurring substance.

Singapore's largest hospital apologized Tuesday after 22 kidney patients were infected with hepatitis C, with four dying in a rare outbreak at the prestigious facility.

The infections at the government-run Singapore General Hospital (SGH) involved patients admitted to one ward between April and June.