Health
Latest stories
UN: OK to Use Untested Ebola Drugs in Outbreak

The World Health Organization declared it's ethical to use untested drugs and vaccines in the ongoing Ebola outbreak in West Africa, although the tiny supply of one experimental treatment has been depleted and it could be many months until more is available.

The last of the drug is on its way to Liberia for two stricken doctors, according to a U.K.-based public relations firm representing Liberia. The U.S. company that makes it said the supply is now "exhausted." Later Tuesday, Canada said it would provide some of its experimental Ebola vaccine for use in West Africa.

W140 Full Story
Ebola-Hit Sierra Leone's Freetown a City on Edge

In the rain-lashed streets of Sierra Leone's capital, emaciated mongrels pick fights with feral pigs for scraps of food, unnoticed by the market traders and office workers passing by.

The 1.2 million inhabitants of Freetown were once wary of diseased street animals, but now it is each other that they fear.

W140 Full Story
Guinea-Bissau Shuts Border with Ebola-Hit Guinea

Guinea-Bissau is closing its border with Guinea, one of the west African countries hardest hit by the deadly Ebola virus, Prime Minister Domingos Simoes Pereira said Tuesday.

"In light of information provided by the health ministry and after a series of consultations, the government of Guinea-Bissau has decided to close its southern and eastern borders" with Guinea "until further notice," Pereira told a press conference.

W140 Full Story
When it Comes to Exercise, How Much is too Much?

Running more than four miles a day could be dangerous to your health, according to a study out Tuesday that examined how much exercise is too much.

Researchers focused on 2,400 heart attack survivors and found that the more exercise they did, the less risk they faced of dying from heart disease -- up to a point.

W140 Full Story
Ban Calls for Avoiding Ebola 'Panic and Fear'

Urging governments to avoid panic and fear, U.N. chief Ban Ki-moon announced plans on Tuesday to step up the global response to the Ebola outbreak and bring it under control.

Ban appointed British physician David Nabarro to be the U.N. coordinator for Ebola, tasked with overseeing the world body's strategy as the death toll from the outbreak topped 1,000.

W140 Full Story
In Liberia Village, Shunned Ebola Victims Left to Die

The only sounds in the abandoned Liberian village were the cries of a little girl, shut up with her mother's body inside the family home, starving and thirsty as she waited for death.

Eventually even the girl -- 12-year-old Fatu Sherrif -- fell silent as she too succumbed to the deadly Ebola virus that is ravaging her country and other parts of west Africa.

W140 Full Story
Depression: Indiscriminate Stalker

Despite fame and fortune, celebrity artists may be more vulnerable to depression than the rest of us, brought low by the same creative qualities that gave them success in the first place, analysts say.

As the world mourned the apparent suicide of comedian Robin Williams on Tuesday, there were many questions about the state of mind of the Oscar-winner once called the funniest man alive.

W140 Full Story
WHO: Global Ebola Death Toll Tops 1,000

The Ebola virus has killed 1,013 people and infected another 1,848, latest World Health Organisation data showed.

The fatalities include 52 deaths recorded between August 7-9 in three West African countries at the centre of the epidemic -- Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone -- according to the data released late Monday.

W140 Full Story
Mexico Doctors Remove Woman's 130-Pound Tumor

Mexican doctors say they have removed a 130-pound (60-kilogram) tumor from the body of a 51-year-old woman who had been unable to leave her home for two years.

Dr. Gilberto Inzulza says a team of surgeons needed four hours to remove the giant tumor from the body of Mercedes Talamantes. Inzulza is chief surgeon at the IMSS public hospital in the northern city of Cabo San Lucas, where Talamantes underwent surgery last month. He hasn't said how much she weighed after the operation.

W140 Full Story
3D Tissue Lets U.S. Scientists Study Brain Injury

U.S. scientists on Monday described new advances in making 3D brain-like tissue that can live for more than two months and allows real-time research on brain trauma, disease and recovery.

Scientists discovered they could grow rat neurons in the tissue and then watch how it responded after an injury, incurred by dropping a weight on it, according to the study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

W140 Full Story