Health workers on the frontline of west Africa's Ebola crisis pleaded with G20 leaders on Thursday for more resources, describing horrific working conditions as they attempt to contain the deadly outbreak.

Liberian nurse Laurene Wisseh said health workers had been reduced to using plastic bags in an attempt to cover themselves due to a lack of rubber gloves and protective suits.

Indian police announced Thursday they had detained the doctor behind botched mass sterilization surgeries that left 13 women dead, as campaigners called for urgent reform of the government's family planning program.

R.K Gupta was seized for questioning amid mounting anger over the tragedy in central Chhattisgarh state where women were paid to undergo a procedure that also left dozens in hospital, senior police officers said.

Furious protesters took to the streets in central India on Wednesday, smashing up cars and demanding the chief minister resign, as the death toll from a mass government-run sterilization program rose to 13.

Another 14 women are seriously ill in Chhattisgarh state after the surgery, which women are paid 1,400 rupees ($23) to have under a government scheme to reduce population growth.

People with an algae virus in their throats had more difficulty completing a mental exercise than healthy people, and more research is needed to understand why, US scientists say.

A study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences showed that the virus was present in about half of 92 human subjects studied, and those who had it performed worse on certain basic tasks.

A second person from Mali has died from Ebola, just as hardest-hit Liberia hailed a dramatic drop in infections and the last-known sufferer in the United States was declared cured on Tuesday.

The death of a nurse who had treated an Ebola patient from neighboring Guinea came as a blow to authorities in Mali, just as they were beginning to lift quarantine restrictions on more than 100 people exposed to the country's first victim of the virus.

A group of more than 300 prominent doctors, religious leaders and ethicists on Wednesday urged President Barack Obama to change the current system for organ donation, saying too few people get life-saving transplants.

In an open letter to the Obama administration, the group called for the government to start researching ways to make organ donation more appealing to the general public, in order to end a chronic shortage of organs that is getting worse each year.

Health Minister Wael Abu Faour raised the alarm on Tuesday over food safety in the country, warning that “the food that the Lebanese are eating is full of diseases.”

“A large number of foodstuffs firms are operating without licenses and without meeting the proper health conditions,” the minister announced at a press conference.

Scientists said Monday they had found a variant of a gene that confers a near five-fold protection against typhoid fever, which affects millions of people each year.

The discovery, that came from screening the genomes of hundreds of infected people and healthy controls in Vietnam and Nepal, may aid the development of better vaccines for typhoid and other bacterial diseases, said the authors of a study published in Nature Genetics.

Canada on Monday ramped up travel restrictions for people returning from Ebola-stricken countries, officials said, and said "high risk" travelers should be closely monitored for symptoms or admitted to a special facility.

People returning from Liberia, Guinea or Sierra Leone who have come into contact with the virus are told to report to local health officials and self-monitor for up to 21 days, Canada's Public Health Agency said.

Eight women have died in India and dozens more are in a critical condition after a state-run sterilization program designed to control the country's billion-plus population went badly wrong.

More than 60 women are in hospital after suffering complications from the surgery over the weekend and 24 of them are seriously ill, authorities in the central state of Chhattisgarh said Tuesday.