The number of adults estimated to be living with diabetes surged to 422 million by 2014, a nearly four-fold increase on 1980 figures, the World Health Organization (WHO) said Wednesday, in its first-ever global report on the disease.

"Globally, an estimated 422 million adults were living with diabetes in 2014, compared to 108 million in 1980," the U.N. health agency said, warning that the condition had spread because of worldwide changes "in the way people eat, move and live."

Twenty million poor Bangladeshis are still drinking water contaminated with arsenic, two decades after the potentially deadly toxin was discovered in the supply, Human Rights Watch said Wednesday.

A new report from the rights group said Bangladesh had failed to take the basic steps needed to tackle the problem, which kills an estimated 43,000 Bangladeshis every year, mostly in poor rural areas.

Subway is moving ahead and posting calorie counts on menu boards nationally despite another delay in a federal rule requiring the information.

The sandwich chain says its new menu boards with calorie counts are already rolling out around the country and should be up in all 27,000 of its U.S. stores by April 11. The decision to forge ahead comes as restaurant chains have awaited the Food and Drug Administration's final guidance and enforcement of a rule requiring food sellers with 20 or more locations to post the information.

A European Union report says the bloc's citizens spend over $27 billion on drugs and 1 percent of adults use cannabis on an almost daily basis.

Tuesday's report said that 38 percent of the retail market for drugs was cannabis, accounting for some $10.6 billion in annual trade. Behind cannabis, heroin came in second with a value of $7.7 billion a year.

The world's first public dengue vaccination program was launched in the Philippines on Monday as nurses began injecting the first batch of a million children with a French drug to combat the sometimes deadly disease.

Several hundred children aged 9-10 queued in front of government health workers at a public school in eastern Manila for the injections, capping a 20-year, 1.5-billion-euro ($1.8 bn) effort by French drug manufacturer Sanofi to develop the vaccine.

Taking steps to recover from depression and boost vitamin D levels may improve heart health, according to new research out Saturday. 

The findings were contained in two studies presented at the American College of Cardiology conference in Chicago.

A major international study Saturday suggested that healthy people may reduce their risk of developing heart problems before they start by taking cholesterol-lowering drugs, known as statins.

The findings came from three trials, which included more than 12,000 people in 21 countries, and were released at the American College of Cardiology conference in Chicago.

One in five adults could be obese by 2025, said a major survey Friday that warned of a looming epidemic of "severe obesity" with significant health and economic costs.

The world's first liver transplant from a donor infected with HIV to an HIV-positive recipient was announced Wednesday by U.S. doctors, three years after a U.S. ban on such operations was overturned.

The procedure involved a deceased donor whose liver was transplanted into a patient who had been infected with the virus that causes AIDS more than 20 years ago, said doctors at Johns Hopkins University.

A global police crackdown has seized over 10,000 tons of illicit or dangerous food and drink including monkey meat, dead insects and fake sugar spiked with fertilizer, the European police agency said Wednesday.