China's health ministry has promised to provide medical care and a living allowance for an eight-year-old HIV-positive boy targeted by villagers for expulsion, state media reported Monday, in a case that has drawn widespread condemnation.

Some 200 residents -- including the child's own grandfather -- signed a petition last week to expel him from their village in the southwestern province of Sichuan to "protect villagers' health", sparking anger online at perceived prejudice and ignorance in the countryside. 

Patients with chronic hepatitis C have a new option for treating the liver-damaging virus, with the approval of a combination treatment developed by AbbVie.

The Food and Drug Administration on Friday approved the sale of a packaged treatment called Viekira Pak made by AbbVie Inc. of North Chicago, Illinois.

Mozambique has passed a law permitting women to terminate unwanted pregnancies under specified conditions, a move hailed by activists in a country where clandestine abortions account for a large number of maternal deaths.

President Armando Guebuza on Thursday quietly signed into law a revised penal code bill that eases prohibitions in abortion regulations.

U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon arrived in the Guinean capital Conakry on Saturday on the last day of his tour of west African countries hit by the world's worst outbreak of Ebola.

The U.N. chief was greeted at the airport by Guinea's foreign and health ministers Francois Louceny Fall and Remy Lamah.

The grandfather of a Chinese HIV-positive boy has defended his support for a petition to banish him from their village, media reported Saturday, in a case that has sparked intense soul-searching in China.

Some 200 residents -- including the eight-year-old's own grandfather -- signed a petition to expel him from their village in China's southwestern Sichuan province, in a bid to "protect villagers' health".

A listeria outbreak believed to originate from commercially packaged caramel apples has killed at least four people in the United States and sickened 28 people since November, officials said Friday.

Listeria monocytogenes is caused by a bacteria and can cause life-threatening illness. It is particularly dangerous for children, the elderly and pregnant women, in whom it can cause miscarriage.

U.N. chief Ban Ki-moon Friday arrived in Liberia on the first stop of a visit to Ebola-ravaged west African countries for a first-hand assessment of global efforts to fight the epidemic.

Ban, who flew in from Ghana, where the U.N. Ebola mission is headquartered, was welcomed on arrival in Monrovia by Liberian Vice President Joseph Boakai with full military honors.

The European Union's highest court ruled Thursday that obesity can be considered a "disability" if it hinders an overweight person's performance at work.

The European Court of Justice had been asked by a Danish court to consider the case of a child minder in Denmark who said he was fired four years ago because he is obese.

German doctors on Friday gave details of how an experimental drug together with advanced intensive care helped save a Ugandan physician who had been airlifted from Sierra Leone with Ebola.

A prototype drug called FX06, designed to stop hemorrhage, was given to the patient after the doctors got special authorization from their hospital's ethics committee, they reported in The Lancet.

For health care workers on the front lines of the Ebola epidemic in West Africa, risking their lives in stifling protective suits, relief could soon be on the way.

Researchers at Johns Hopkins University have developed a new-style outfit that is not only more comfortable, but also less likely to accidentally infect its users.