A new and more aggressive strain of HIV discovered in West Africa causes significantly faster progression to AIDS, researchers at Sweden's Lund University said Thursday.

The new strain of the virus that causes AIDS, called A3/02, is a fusion of the two most common HIV strains in Guinea-Bissau. It has so far only been found in West Africa.

Qatar said on Thursday that three camels have been found infected with the MERS coronavirus, in the first case of animals contracting the SARS-like virus in the Gulf state.

The camels were found in the same barn, and had been in contact with two humans who fully recovered from the Middle East Respiratory Syndrome, said the country's Supreme Council of Health.

An experimental device is letting paralyzed people drive wheelchairs simply by flicking their tongue in the right direction.

Key to this wireless system: Users get their tongue pierced with a magnetic stud that resembles jewelry and acts like a joystick, in hopes of offering them more mobility and independence.

HIV infections in Europe and Central Asia increased by eight percent in 2012 compared to a year earlier, the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control announced Wednesday.

The rise of 131,000 new cases was driven by a nine-percent increase in the Eastern Europe and Central Asia region which accounted for 102,000 new infections -- around three-quarters of them in the Russian Federation alone.

Scientists on Wednesday said they had identified a new target in the parasite that causes malaria, a disease that causes more than a half a million deaths annually.

Potential drugs can aim at a newly-discovered enzyme that the parasite uses to metabolize energy at every stage of its infection in humans, they said.

More than two dozen cancer groups say that about half the world's population doesn't have adequate access to painkillers because of restrictive laws meant to combat drug abuse.

In a global survey released on Thursday, The European Society for Medical Oncology and partners estimated millions of cancer patients aren't able to get seven cheap medicines considered essential for pain relief, including codeine and morphine.

Could paying for bone marrow cells really boost the number of donors? The Obama administration is taking steps to block a federal court ruling that had opened a way to find out.

Buying or selling organs has long been illegal, punishable by five years in jail. The 1984 National Organ Transplantation Act that set the payment ban didn't just refer to solid organs — it included bone marrow transplants, too.

Two couples in their 80s have committed suicide in Paris, reigniting a debate in France on euthanasia which is still illegal in the country.

The suicides came just four days apart. The second couple, aged 84 and 81, were found dead on Monday at their apartment in a building in the fashionable seventh district, police said.

The U.S. health regulator has restricted exports from a plant owned by Indian generic drugmaker Wockhardt in the latest ban on its products, sending the company's shares tumbling 14 percent on Wednesday.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration slapped an "import alert" on the company's Chikalthana plant in Maharashtra state, the regulator said in a notice on its website late Tuesday.

A mass vaccination program has been launched in Philippine communities that were devastated by Super Typhoon Haiyan to protect children against measles and polio, U.N. agencies said Wednesday.

The campaign began this week with 30,000 children being vaccinated in Tacloban city, one of the places hardest hit when Haiyan claimed thousands of lives nearly three weeks ago, the United Nations Children's Fund UNICEF and World Health Organisation said.