Mexico, second in obesity in the world after the United States, wants its children to cut down on the soft drinks and fatty foods that have made them the chubbiest kids in Latin America.

Worried about the growing waistlines in schools, the public education ministry has launched a campaign to encourage youngsters to change their eating habits.

Sub-Saharan Africa is likely to see a more than 200 percent increase in the number of older people living with HIV in the next 30 years, thanks to improvements in lifesaving treatment, experts said Thursday.

"The proportion of people living with HIV aged 50 and over is going to increase a lot," Robert Cumming of the school of public health at the University of Sydney said at a conference on ageing in Africa.

Former U.N. secretary general Kofi Annan called Thursday for a discussion on decriminalization of drugs, criticizing the crackdown on traffickers in Mexico led by outgoing President Felipe Calderon.

"When you look at the results of Calderon's efforts, most people will tell you it has not worked. He's got lots of people killed," Annan said at the Brookings Institution in Washington.

A drive that would put more condoms in South Africa's classrooms has critics warning it will only stimulate sexual activity, a charge the country's health minister tells Agence France Presse is unfounded.

The great roll out has begun. After much planning, South Africa's government has launched a wide-ranging program to give children from pre-school through pre-university a better chance of staying healthy as they begin to engage in sex.

Bariatric surgery to help the obese shed weight also reduces risks of cardiovascular disease, according to a review published on Wednesday in the specialist journal Heart.

Restrictive bands on the stomach or surgery to bypass part of the digestive tract are sometimes used to help morbidly obese patients lose weight when drugs or changes in diet and exercise fail.

The first public statement in almost four months from Fidel Castro appeared in Cuba's state media on Wednesday, as rumors persist about the 86-year-old revolutionary icon's health.

Castro has not been seen in public since March 28, when Pope Benedict XVI paid a landmark visit, and briefly the following week on April 5 with Chilean student leader Camila Vallejo -- both appearances more than six months ago.

Hundreds of thousands of people in Sudan's conflict-torn state of South Kordofan are on the brink of famine as Khartoum keeps up a blockade on aid agencies, a new survey released Thursday said.

The study, carried out by an international aid group and released via the Washington-based Enough Project, warns the situation in the state resembles the conditions that led up to the Horn of Africa famine in 2011.

At least 19 people have died in a widening fungal meningitis outbreak linked to a contaminated steroid, U.S. health officials said Wednesday.

The flare-up has caused 247 cases across 15 states, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported on its website.

An Indonesian cruise ship crew member died of meningitis on Tuesday, nine days after being hospitalized with three colleagues in the western Italian port city of Livorno, health sources said.

Ermandiasa I Gede, 32, died despite intensive attempts to save him since he was hospitalized on October 7.

Between rice fields and coconut trees on Indonesia's "paradise" island of Bali, a man lies chained by the ankles to a rotting wooden bed in a garden, staring at roosters tottering by.

I Ketut Lingga, 54, has schizophrenia and is one of more than 15,000 Indonesians with a mental illness who are either chained, caged or placed in primitive stocks, according to health ministry data.