Canadian scientist Mark Wainberg -- described as a "giant" of HIV science and who had recently been working on finding a cure for the condition -- has died at the age of 71, UNAIDS said on Thursday.

The government of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau will unveil legislation Thursday to fully legalize recreational marijuana use, making Canada only the second country to do so, after Uruguay.

Its legalization and regulation would follow in 2018, in time for Canada's national day on July 1.

El Nino, the cyclical climatic phenomenon in the Pacific Ocean, is linked to shifts in cholera cases in Africa, providing an early warning that could save lives, scientists said Monday.

During the years when El Nino is warming the eastern Pacific, East Africa has about 50,000 additional cholera cases a year, new research from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health suggests.

Swiss researchers said Monday they have developed a wireless camera system to monitor vital signs in premature babies, a move that could replace uncomfortable and highly inaccurate skin sensors.

The skin sensors currently used to monitor vital signs in babies born prematurely generate false alarms in up to 90 percent of cases, mainly set off by the baby's movement.

The U.S. government plans to stop funding the United Nations Population Fund because of the organization's "coercive" family planning practices, including providing abortions, officials in Washington said late Monday.

Dutch doctors have come out against a controversial proposed law that would allow assisted suicide for those who feel their lives are complete, and not just for people in unbearable suffering.

Cambodia officially banned selling and exporting locally-pumped human breast milk on Tuesday, after reports exposed how women were turning to the controversial trade to boost meagre incomes in one of Southeast Asia's poorest countries. 

The order comes after Cambodia temporarily halted breast milk exports by the Utah-based Ambrosia Labs, which claims to be the first firm to source the product from overseas and distribute it in the United States.

Medical NGOs mounted a new legal bid Monday to break a US pharma giant's hold on a hepatitis C drug whose price -- costing thousands of dollars for a typical course -- has unleashed a fierce patent battle.

The wail sliced through the stuffy underground medical center in a besieged town near the Syrian capital. Dania, 14, was writhing in pain ahead of her first ever dialysis session.

She was one of dozens of patients being treated for renal insufficiency inside a basement-turned-clinic in Douma, the largest town in the Eastern Ghouta rebel bastion near Damascus.

The United Nations has raised less than a third of the funding needed to prevent famine in Somalia, a spokesman has said, ahead of a Security Council meeting on the crisis in the drought-hit country.

The humanitarian crisis is worsening in Somalia with more than 300 deaths from cholera and diarrhea since the beginning of the year, according to U.N. figures.