A New York city councilman wants to ban toys in fast-food restaurant kid meals that do not meet strict dietary guidelines.

Democrat Ben Kallos introduced a bill Thursday that would ban the toys from a child's meal if the food serving contains more than 500 calories and more than 600 milligrams of sodium.

The United Nations' new pointman on Ebola said Friday he was preparing for a possible flareup of the epidemic in West Africa.

"We're either close to a plateau, but then we'll drop, or we're in a phase, an inflection point, where it is going to increase, and I absolutely cannot tell," David Nabarro told Agence France Presse during a stopover at Conakry airport en route to Monrovia. He was determined to "ensure that every piece of our apparatus is at its optimum so it could deal possibly with a flareup if that's necessary."

A hemorrhagic fever of unknown origin has killed 13 people in the northwestern Democratic Republic of Congo since August 11, a health ministry official said.

"All 13 people who have died suffered from a fever, diarrhea, vomiting and, in a terminal stage, of vomiting a black matter," said Dr Felix Kabange Numbi. So far, about 80 people who came into contact with the deceased have been admitted to hospital.

New research suggests a one-two punch could help battle polio in some of the world's most remote and conflict-torn regions: Giving a single vaccine shot to children who've already swallowed drops of an oral polio vaccine greatly boosted their immunity.

The World Health Organization officials said the combination strategy already is starting to be used in mass vaccination campaigns in some hard-hit areas and is being introduced for routine immunizations in developing countries.

Botox has frozen the faces of countless Hollywood stars, and international researchers said Wednesday the toxic injections might also be able to stop cancer in its tracks, at least temporarily.

The findings in the journal Science Translational Medicine are based on studies of mice with stomach cancer.

A total of 172 "suicide tourists" traveled to Switzerland in 2012, double the 2009 number, to die with medical assistance -- a practice prohibited in many countries, a study said Thursday.

German and UK citizens were the bulk of visitors, and the reasons most often cited were neurological conditions like paralysis, motor neurone disease, Parkinson's and multiple sclerosis.

High in the hills of Myanmar's war-torn borderlands, a clutch of new leprosy cases among communities virtually cut off from medical help is a sign that the country's battle with the ancient disease is far from over.

It took six days by plane, boat, motorcycle, bus -- and an arduous mountain trek -- for a group of medical workers to treat two leprosy patients in a remote corner of the country, where conflict and neglect are the legacy of decades of military rule and even access to basic medicines is a distant dream.

Violence erupted in an Ebola quarantine zone in Liberia's capital Wednesday when soldiers opened fire and used tear gas on crowds as they evacuated a state official and her family.

Four residents were injured in the clashes that flared in Monrovia's West Point slum which has been contained as part of new security measures aimed at containing the deadly virus.

A private hospital in South Africa admitted Wednesday that it had carried out heart surgery on the wrong patient after a name mix-up. 

Local media said 83-year-old Rita du Plessis was being treated for a respiratory infection, but ended up in theatre for a procedure to remove excess moisture around her heart.

Danish researchers reported a link Wednesday between a commonly-used antibiotic and a "significantly" higher risk of heart deaths, while observers urged caution in interpreting the results.

In a study published online by the British medical journal The BMJ, the team said clarithromycin use was associated with a 76-percent higher risk of cardiac death, compared to use of penicillin V.