A group of United Nations peacekeepers trapped in a clinic in Mali when it was quarantined after an outbreak of Ebola have been allowed to leave, the UN said Saturday.

Around 20 soldiers from the mission, known as MINUSMA, had been admitted to the Pasteur Clinic in the capital Bamako with various injuries connected to their service in restive northern Mali.

There are sprays, roll-ons and sticks. Now one Bulgarian candy-maker is offering a new kind of deodorant: in the form of delicious sweets.

"It's an old saying that true beauty comes from inside.... Why not from a candy?" Ventsislav Peychev, owner of Bulgaria's small Alpi candy factory owner, told AFP.

The AUB Faculty of Health Sciences (FHS) held December 5-6 an international scientific conference on “Public Health in Contexts of Uncertainty” in the region, to culminate its 60th anniversary celebrations.

The conference highlighted FHS’s research and outreach networks, which have allowed it to make a positive and tangible impact on public health in Lebanon and the region.

This year's flu season could be especially severe, US health authorities warned Thursday, adding that genetic mutations mean the vaccine won't be as effective against some of the most prevalent flu strains.

So far this season, most flu patients in the United States have contracted seasonal influenza A H3N2 viruses.

Obesity and extreme obesity can reduce life expectancy by up to eight years and deprive people of as much as 19 years of good health, according to a study published on Friday.

The research -- a mathematical model based on U.S. health data -- should be a useful tool for doctors advising patients who are worryingly overweight, its authors said.

Environment Minister Mohammed Mashnouq asked the ministry of health to take strict measures against all hospitals, laboratories, private clinics and beauty centers responsible for illegally disposing their medical waste products in sea, LBCI reported on Friday..

Mashnouq's step came after he received from the Lebanese Union of Professional Divers photos of huge amounts of medical waste material piling off Lebanon's coast.

At least 11 people have lost their sight after undergoing free cataract surgery at a camp in northern India, local authorities say, as fears grow the final figure will be far higher.

Officials said 62 people had the surgery at a village camp run by a medical charity on November 4, and they were trying to ascertain how many people had lost their sight.

A panel of experts convened by U.S. health regulators failed Wednesday to decide whether a lifetime ban should be lifted on gay men donating blood, following two days of heated deliberations.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration, which takes into account the 17-member committee's suggestions, did not indicate when it would make a decision.

A new compound, tested so far on rats, shows promise in restoring functions lost by paralyzing injury to the spinal cord, a study said on Wednesday.

Called intracellular sigma peptide (ISP), the drug helped lab animals with severe spinal injury recover the ability to urinate or move, or both, it said.

China will stop its controversial practice of using executed prisoners as a source of transplant organs from next month, a Chinese newspaper reported Thursday, a promise it has made repeatedly in the past.

High demand for organs in China and a chronic shortage of donations mean that death row inmates have been a key source for years, generating heated controversy.