Eight women have died in India and dozens more are in a critical condition after a state-run sterilization program designed to control the country's billion-plus population went badly wrong.

More than 60 women are in hospital after suffering complications from the surgery over the weekend and 24 of them are seriously ill, authorities in the central state of Chhattisgarh said Tuesday.

A Maine nurse who battled politicians over her quarantine after she returned from treating Ebola patients in West Africa said she will continue speaking out on behalf of public health workers.

Monday marks the 21st day since Kaci Hickox's last exposure to an Ebola patient, a 10-year-old girl who suffered seizures before dying alone without family.

Uzbekistan has temporarily suspended travel to and from Ebola-hit African countries, and issued an alert about visits to Western and East European nations.

The Central Asian state's anti-Ebola commission has banned anyone travelling from Guinea, Sierra Leone, Liberia, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Nigeria, Senegal and Mali from entering the country.

The last region of Sierra Leone to be affected by Ebola, Koinadugu, in the north-east of the country, has seen 50 people die from the virus in recent weeks, according to the Red Cross.

"Fifty people have died since mid-October," the head of the Red Cross in Sierra Leone, John Marah, told Agence France Presse.

Laundry detergent pods could be dangerous for young children, researchers warned Monday, as reports grow of kids under six swallowing the capsules in the United States.

The detergent pods -- on U.S. shelves since 2010 -- are just the right size for a single load of laundry, eliminating the need to measure out a liquid or powder.

The Supreme Court has agreed to hear a new challenge to President Barack Obama's health care law — a case that threatens subsidies that help millions of low- and middle-income people afford their health insurance premiums.

The justices said they will review a federal appeals court ruling that upheld IRS regulations that allow health-insurance tax credits under the Affordable Care Act for consumers in all 50 states. Opponents argue that most of the subsidies are illegal.

The deadliest Ebola outbreak ever is finally slowing in Liberia, the worst-hit country, but still wreaking havoc in two neighboring west African states amid warnings of thousands of unreported deaths.

As the initially lacklustre global response to the crisis centered in Liberia and adjoining Sierra Leone and Guinea gathered some pace following repeated and impassioned appeals from top UN officials and world leaders, the good news from Liberia was tempered by warnings that the global toll is likely vastly underestimated.

Japan will provide up to $100 million in fresh aid to Ebola-hit West Africa, the government said Friday, after the United States called for further global efforts to combat the deadly virus.

Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga said the aid would come on top of $40 million assistance announced by Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in September.

An 18-meter (60-foot) bright pink condom raised eyebrows in Sydney on Friday after it was erected over a Sydney landmark as part of a new awareness campaign about HIV.

The giant sheath was placed over a heritage-listed obelisk at Hyde Park in the center of the city.

The explosion in the world's ageing population presents herculean challenges for health systems, especially in poorer countries, the U.N.'s World Health Organisation (WHO) warned on Thursday.

As people live longer, the need to care for long-term, age-related health problems will grow, it said.