It is a ritual supposed to keep women "pure", but an increased understanding of the severe health risks of extreme forms of female genital mutilation appears to be slowly rolling back its prevalence in Somalia's northwest.

In the self-declared Somali republic of Somaliland, most women over 25 have undergone the most extreme form of FGM, known as "pharaonic". This entails removal of the clitoris and the labia minora, cutting out flesh from the vulva and sewing up the outer labia, leaving only a tiny orifice for the passage of urine and menstrual flow.

U.S. obstetricians are being told to show more patience in the delivery room.

New guidelines say doctors should give otherwise healthy women more time to deliver their babies vaginally before assuming that labor has stalled. The recommendations are the latest in years of efforts to prevent unnecessary cesarean sections.

Health complications stemming from Japan's 2011 tsunami have killed more people in one Japanese region than the disaster itself, the local authority said Thursday.

Data compiled by officials and police show that almost three years after the huge waves smashed ashore, 1,656 people living in Fukushima prefecture have died from stress and other illnesses related to the disaster, compared with 1,607 who were killed in the initial calamity.

Thanks to smartphones, email, video games and photo sharing are available at the touch of a finger.

But attach a special case and that same phone can produce an electrocardiogram (EKG) from the electrical impulses in your hand and send it to a doctor.

China can prevent nearly 13 million tobacco-related deaths by 2050 by fully implementing a set of neglected anti-smoking policies it had already agreed to, researchers said Wednesday.

The estimated number of lives saved, more than the population of Greece, would result from a 40-percent lower smoking rate than that projected on current trends, said a paper in the British Medical Journal.

Several thousand protesters have joined a demonstration in central Athens after the Health Ministry ordered the closure of the country's entire state-run outpatient clinic network for one month to reorganize the health system.

The protest organized by a Communist labor union ended peacefully Tuesday outside the ministry.

A Japanese research institute Tuesday said it was probing its own study that promised a 'game changer' way to create stem cells, a feat hailed as revolutionary for the fast-developing field.

The findings, published by Japanese researcher Haruko Obokata and American partners in a January edition of the British journal Nature, outlined a simple and low-tech approach in the quest to grow transplant tissue in the lab.

Social contact and regular exercise are key to aging well and living a longer life, according to newly presented research.

In fact, feeling extremely lonely can increase an older person's chances of premature death by 14 percent, an impact nearly as strong as that of a disadvantaged socioeconomic status, according to John Cacioppo, psychology professor at the University of Chicago.

The doctors were out of ideas to help 5-year-old Charlotte Figi.

Suffering from a rare genetic disorder, she had as many as 300 grand mal seizures a week, used a wheelchair, went into repeated cardiac arrest and could barely speak. As a last resort, her mother began calling medical marijuana shops.

A saliva test for teenage boys with mild symptoms of depression could help identify those who will later develop major depression, a new study says.

Researchers measured the stress hormone cortisol in teenage boys and found that ones with high levels coupled with mild depression symptoms were up to 14 times more likely to suffer clinical depression later in life than those with low or normal cortisol levels.