Saudi Arabia's acting health minister has announced the sacking of the head of a Jeddah hospital where a spike in MERS infections among medical staff sparked panic among the public.

And as two more deaths were announced from the Middle East Respiratory Syndrome coronavirus, which some researchers think may originate in camels, Adel Fakieh also announced an awareness campaign to help stop the disease's spread.

The global "war on drugs" has been a catastrophic failure and world leaders must rethink their approach, a group including five Nobel Prize-winning economists, Britain's deputy prime minister and a former U.S. secretary of state said Tuesday.

An academic report published by the London School of Economics (LSE) called "Ending the Drug Wars" pointed to violence in Afghanistan, Latin America and other regions as evidence of the need for a new approach.

A Chinese man has died from the H5N6 strain of bird flu, in what is believed to be the world's first case of human infection from the virus subtype, state media and experts said.

Tests showed the 49-year-old man, from Nanchong in the southwestern province of Sichuan, had contracted the virus, the official Xinhua news agency said late Tuesday citing local health authorities.

Pakistan will set up mandatory polio immunization points at its international airports in response to recommendations by the World Health Organisation, the health ministry said Tuesday.

The WHO warned Monday that the crippling disease has re-emerged as a public health emergency, with the virus currently affecting 10 countries worldwide and endemic in three including Pakistan.

Health officials said Monday they expect the first patient in the United States diagnosed with a mysterious virus from the Middle East to be released soon from a hospital, though he could continue to be isolated at home.

The man has been hospitalized at a hospital in Indiana state since April 28. Officials said he fell ill with Middle East Respiratory Syndrome, or MERS, after flying to the U.S. last month from Saudi Arabia, where he is a health care worker.

Somalia is the worst country on Earth to be a mother, according to a report published by Save the Children on Monday which calls for more action to protect mothers and children in crisis-hit areas.

The London-based charity estimates that 800 mothers and 18,000 young children are dying around the world every day from largely preventable causes.

The only known U.S. case of the dangerous Middle East respiratory virus -- a medical worker who became ill after traveling to Saudi Arabia -- is improving, health officials said Monday.

No additional cases had been identified as of Sunday, the Indiana Department of Health said, adding that a press conference would be held at 1530 GMT to give further details.

The World Health Organization warned Monday that polio has reemerged as a public health emergency, after new cases of the crippling disease began surfacing and spreading across borders from countries like Syria and Pakistan.

"The conditions for a public health emergency of international concern have been met," WHO assistant director general Bruce Aylward told reporters in Geneva following crisis talks on the virus long thought to be on the road to extinction.

The countries of west Africa's Mano River Union -- Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone -- kicked off a summit meeting on Sunday with the region's Ebola outbreak high on the agenda.

Presidents Ellen Johnson Sirleaf of Liberia and Ernest Bai Koroma of Sierra Leone were in Conakry for the closed-door talks with their Guinean counterpart Alpha Conde, joined by Ivory Coast Foreign Minister Charles Diby Koffi.

A large study in Sweden has shown that genes are just as important as environmental factors in assessing the causes of autism.

Researchers were surprised to discover that the inheritability of the neurodevelopmental disorder was about 50 percent -- much lower than previous studies that put it at 80-90 percent -- and that it was equal to environmental causes, according to the study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association.