Smoker numbers are declining in many parts of the world, but upward trends in African and Mediterranean countries mean the global total will not change much over the next 10 years, researchers said Friday.

The U.N.'s World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that about six million people die around the world every year from smoking-related causes -- more than five million from direct tobacco use and the rest from second-hand smoke.

Every evening for months the sky would turn orange as Liberia's Ebola crematorium roared into life, its towering flames reducing victim after victim to ash and blackened bone.

It was a ritual that the villagers of Boys Town came to dread, the thick black smoke and smell of death permeating their homes and spreading alarm in the community.

The world can beat the liver-attacking hepatitis B virus, which results in some 650.000 deaths a year, the World Health Organization said Thursday, releasing its first treatment guidelines for the disease.

"Viral hepatitis is certainly an epidemic, a pandemic, but it is one that remains silent," said Gottfried Hirnschall, head of WHO's HIV/AIDS department.

Can a tetanus shot help treat brain cancer? A small study hints that it might.

A dose of tetanus vaccine let patients live longer when added to an experimental treatment for the most common and deadly kind of brain tumor, researchers report.

A female British healthcare worker who contracted Ebola in Sierra Leone was being flown home for treatment on Thursday, the Ministry of Defense said.

A Royal Air Force plane sent to the west African country on Wednesday is bringing the military servicewoman back to be treated in London's Royal Free Hospital, an MoD spokeswoman said.

An experimental, non-invasive technique using targeted ultrasound has shown promise in lab animals toward eliminating the brain plaques that cause Alzheimer's disease, an incurable form of dementia, researchers said Wednesday.

Tests on mice showed the approach -- using sound waves to penetrate tissue much the same way as ultrasounds are used to detect fetal shape and movement in pregnant women -- eliminated almost all amyloid plaque in 75 percent of the animals studied, without damaging brain tissue, according to the study in the U.S. journal Science Translational Medicine.

Part of their vision to establish a healthy and educated community, cancer patient support groups announced at the UNESCO Palace winners of their ‘Know to Beat’ competition, a press release said on Wednesday.

Under the patronage of the Ministries of Education and Public Health and with the support of Roche Lebanon and SGBL, the program targeted high school students to increase education and awareness on cancer.

U.S. senators on Tuesday introduced the most comprehensive legislation on medical marijuana ever brought before Congress, a bipartisan effort aimed at ending federal restrictions on the increasingly accepted treatment.

Twenty-three states already allow the use of cannabis to treat medical conditions like multiple sclerosis (MS) and epilepsy, but federal law still exposes users of the drug to potential investigation and arrest.

The sugar industry convinced U.S. government scientists decades ago to research ways of preventing cavities that did not involve eliminating sweets from the diet, a study said Tuesday.

The findings in the journal PLOS Medicine were based on 319 industry documents from the 1960s and 1970s that were stored in a public library collection at the University of Illinois.

U.S. fast-food chain Burger King said Tuesday it was cutting soft drinks from its children's meals amid mounting pressure to reduce the amount of sweet sodas that kids drink.

Following in the footsteps of rival McDonald's, Burger King said all its childrens' meals would come with either apple juice, fat-free milk or low-fat chocolate milk.