Longer schooling seems to be an effective and affordable way to cut the risk of HIV infection in AIDS-endemic countries, according to the results of a study in Botswana published Monday.

Data collected among 7,018 people in Botswana found that an extra year of secondary schooling lowered the risk of HIV infection over the following decade by eight percentage points -- from about 25 to 17 percent.

Nearly two-thirds of Americans with Alzheimer's disease are women, and now some scientists are questioning the long-held assumption that it's just because they tend to live longer than men.

What else may put woman at extra risk? Could it be genetics? Biological differences in how women age? Maybe even lifestyle factors?

One of the three districts of Sierra Leone where new cases of Ebola have been recorded will jail those who break a new emergency by-law designed to prevent the spread of the disease, an official said Sunday.

The District Ebola Response Center Coordinator, Raymond Kabia said "a high-level stakeholders meeting" on Friday decided that "violators of the by-laws would no longer be fined but will go to jail for six months instead".

A 6-year-old boy has died in Spain's first case of diphtheria since 1987, his hospital said Saturday.

The child had not been vaccinated against the disease amid controversy over the potential side-effects of the jab, and had been fighting the bacterial infection for a month.

Feminist activists on Saturday sent a drone from Germany to Poland carrying abortion pills to highlight the staunchly Catholic country's restrictive abortion laws.

The pills are not available in Poland and Jula Gaweda of the feminist organisation Feminoteka said that two Polish women -- who were not pregnant -- swallowed them as part of the "symbolic" stunt organised by Dutch pro-choice campaign group Women on Waves.

South Korea on Saturday said it was closely monitoring a hospital in eastern Seoul over fears that hundreds of people there may have been exposed to the deadly MERS virus.

A 70-year-old woman who caught Middle East Respiratory Syndrome while visiting an infected relative in a different hospital was feared to have spread the virus to the new site.

Billionaire and philanthropist Bill Gates, who spends millions of dollars on AIDS drug development, said Friday he hoped for a vaccine against the disease within the next decade as a cure remains far off.

"Probably the top priority is a vaccine. If we had a vaccine that can protect people, we can stop the epidemic," the Microsoft mogul said on the sidelines of an anti-AIDS-themed concert in Paris which he backs.

A 15-minute, on-the-spot blood test for Ebola was as accurate in a patient trial as the most widely-used laboratory-based test, its U.S.-based developers said Friday.

An affordable, rapid diagnostic test would be an invaluable tool for health workers on the ground, allowing them to quickly identify and isolate infected individuals and curtail the spread of the deadly haemorrhagic virus.

The Supreme Court's resounding rejection of a conservative attempt to gut President Barack Obama's health care overhaul won't stop Republicans from attacking the law they detest. But now, their efforts will be chiefly about teeing up the issue for the 2016 presidential and congressional elections.

The court's decision left Republican lawmakers stunned and uncertain about some of their next steps. Most agreed they would continue trying to annul the entire law and erase individual pieces of it, like its taxes on medical devices. Yet many also conceded they have little leverage to force Obama to scale back — let alone kill — one of his most treasured legislative achievements.

South Korea has introduced a new law designed to curb a MERS outbreak, tightening quarantine restrictions and imposing jail sentences on those who defy anti-infection measures in a crisis that has now left 31 dead.

Under the new law, passed in parliament late Thursday, people infected with the virus who lie to state investigators about how they came into contact with the disease will face a fine or a prison sentence.