A foreigner has died from MERS while eight people including five health workers have been infected in the Saudi city of Jeddah, where the spread of the coronavirus among medics has sparked panic.

The death of the 45-year-old man, whose nationality has not been disclosed, brings the nationwide toll in the world's most-affected country to 68.

When a BP oil well began gushing crude into the Gulf of Mexico four years ago, fisherman George Barisich used his boat to help clean up the millions of gallons that spewed in what would become the worst offshore spill in U.S. history.

Like so many Gulf Coast residents who pitched in after the April 20, 2010, explosion of the Deepwater Horizon rig, Barisich was motivated by a desire to help and a need to make money — the oil had destroyed his livelihood.

A woman struck down by the killer Ebola virus raging in Guinea has told of her joy at being "reborn" after pulling through against the odds.

The 27-year-old, giving her name as Fanta, recalled how she hovered for weeks between life and death battling the tropical bug, which has killed more than 100 people this year in the poverty-hit west African nation.

Conflict in South Sudan has triggered a serious risk of famine that will kill up to 50,000 children within months if immediate action is not taken, the U.N. warned on Friday.

The African country has experienced high levels of malnutrition since it gained independence in 2011, UNICEF said, and conditions have worsened since ethnic conflict broke out between troops loyal to President Salva Kiir and supporters of his former deputy Riek Machar.

China and India are facing a cancer crisis, with smoking, belated diagnosis and unequal access to treatment all causing large-scale problems, experts said on Friday.

In a major report, published in The Lancet Oncology, more than 40 specialists warn that Asia's big two emerging giants are facing huge economic and human costs from the disease.

The United Arab Emirates announced Friday that one of six Filipino paramedics in the UAE who have been infected by the MERS coronavirus has died from the respiratory disease.

The announcement comes just days after a 24-hour shutdown of the emergency department at a major hospital in Saudi Arabia, where most cases have been reported, amid fears of a spread of the Middle East Respiratory Syndrome among medical staff.

Aspirin, anti-diarrhoea and erectile dysfunction drugs: French customs have seized millions of counterfeit medicines imported from China in what they described as the biggest haul of its kind within the European Union.

A total of 2.4 million pills, capsules and powdered medicine were seized at the end of February in the northern port of Le Havre in 601 boxes labelled as containing Chinese tea, customs officials said Thursday.

International aid organisations launched a series of emergency measures across west Africa on Thursday in a bid to contain one of the worst ever outbreaks of the deadly Ebola virus, which is threatening every country in the region.

The tropical bug is thought to have killed more than 110 people in Guinea and Liberia since January, with suspected cases reported in Mali and Sierra Leone and aid workers warning that vital hygiene products could run out.

Almost 100 people in China died from the H7N9 bird flu strain in the first three months of the year, but the number of both fatalities and infections declined in March, government figures showed.

A total of 24 people died from the disease in March, the National Health and Family Planning Commission said in monthly figures for infectious disease, down from 41 in February and 31 in January. The total number of deaths for the period is 96.

An amoeba parasite that causes potentially fatal dysentery in poor countries wreaks its havoc by eating intestinal cells alive, scientists reported on Wednesday.

Called Entamoeba histolytica, the parasite destroys cells lining the colon, causing ulcers and abscesses and sometimes spreading in the blood to the liver and other organs.