After decades in the shadows, South Africa's traditional "sangoma" healers are modernizing and becoming big business, raising questions about the need for strict regulation.

"Granny" Mahlasela Matcheke runs her practice from a squeaky clean white floor-tiled home in Johannesburg's up-and-coming Soweto township.

The main public hospital in the Saudi city of Jeddah has closed its emergency room after a rise in cases of the MERS virus among medical staff, the health ministry said Tuesday.

A Jeddah paramedic was among two more people Saudi health authorities reported on Sunday had died from the SARS-like disease, bringing the nationwide death toll to 66.

Nobody likes mosquitoes, and the World Health Organization blames them for an array of diseases that kill a million people each year and threaten the health of half the world's people.

On World Health Day, WHO's executive director Jacob Kumaresan took aim at mosquitoes, flies, ticks and other biting bugs that spread malaria, dengue fever, yellow fever, Chagas disease and leishmaniasis for causing "a silent disaster" worldwide. Most victims survive, he said, but often they suffer lifelong disability.

The head of the U.N. population agency said Monday that the world must address why 8.7 million young women aged 15 to 24 resort to unsafe abortions each year.

Babatunde Osotimehin also called on governments to explore why more than 200 million women in developing countries who want to prevent pregnancies don't have access to contraception. And he said countries must answer why one in three girls in developing countries are married before they turn 18, despite near universal commitment to ending child marriages.

Hercules used them to regain his strength after his legendary labors, Hippocrates lauded their beneficial properties and even a famous Roman general, Sulla, said he owed his health to them.

Their praise was for hot springs, a medicinal resource known and appreciated in Greece since antiquity -- though regrettably less so nowadays.

Three years ago, doctors reported that zapping a paralyzed man's spinal cord with electricity allowed him to stand and move his legs. Now they've done the same with three more patients, suggesting their original success was no fluke.

Experts say it's a promising development but warn the experimental treatment isn't a cure. When the implanted device is activated, the men can wiggle their toes, lift their legs and stand briefly. But they aren't able to walk and still use wheelchairs to get around.

President Michel Suleiman stated on Monday that the closure of a pharmaceutical factory in Jdita in the eastern Bekaa Valley came as part of the state's keenness on the health of citizens.

On Friday, the factory was sealed with wax by the state authorities because it failed to meet the manufacturing standards.

Saudi health authorities have reported the deaths of another two men from the MERS coronavirus, bringing the death toll from the respiratory disease in the worst hit country to 66.

A 70-year-old national, who died in the Red Sea port city of Jeddah, had also been suffering from chronic illnesses, the health ministry said in a late Sunday statement.

No smoking, no perfume, no mobile phone use -- the list of rules at a newly opened apartment building on the outskirts of Zurich is long.

For a reason: the structure has been purpose built for people who say exposure to everyday products like perfume, hand lotion or wireless devices make them so sick they cannot function.

Genetic mutations found in brain tumors in children have opened up intriguing avenues to tackle this lethal form of cancer, researchers said on Sunday.

Investigators found telltale mutations in a gene called ACVR1, which appears to play a role in a currently incurable form of childhood brain cancer called diffuse intrinsic pontine glioma, or DIPG.