The World Health Organisation and UNICEF have launched a polio vaccination campaign for 23 million children in the Middle East after 17 cases were discovered in Syria, they announced Monday.

The campaign will be largest-ever immunization response in the region, WHO and the U.N. children's fund said in a joint statement.

Europeans with long-term exposure to particulate pollution from road traffic or industry run a higher risk of premature death, even if air quality meets EU standards, a study said on Monday.

Published in The Lancet, the paper pointed the finger at fine particles of soot and dust, emissions of which are also stirring a health scare in parts of Asia, especially China.

Access to affordable drugs for the world's poor will be hampered if a US plan to impose stricter pharmaceutical patents is adopted at talks on a Pacific trade pact, activists say.

Trade ministers from 12 countries entered a third day of talks in Singapore on Monday in an attempt to meet a US deadline to reach a deal on the proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) before the year ends.

A former Qantas steward who believes he developed Parkinson's disease after repeated exposure to government-mandated pesticides sprayed in the cabin plans to sue Canberra, his lawyer said Monday.

Brett Vollus, 52, worked for Australia's national carrier for 27 years as a flight attendant until his early-onset Parkinson's forced him to take redundancy in May this year.

A court-appointed guardian is dropping her attempt to force an 11-year-old Amish girl with leukemia to resume chemotherapy after she and her parents fled their home to avoid treatment.

The move filed in court Friday will likely bring an end to a months-long fight between Sarah Hershberger's family and a hospital that began when her parents decided to halt the treatments because they were making the girl sick.

The latest hopes of curing AIDS were dashed Friday when U.S. researchers said HIV returned in two men who briefly eradicated the virus after bone marrow transplants for cancer.

Experts described the discovery as a "disappointment," but said it offers important new clues in the hunt for the human immunodeficiency virus's elusive hiding places in the body.

Hong Kong health authorities on Friday confirmed a new human case of the deadly H7N9 bird flu, the second case to come to light in less than five days.

An 80-year-old man has been infected and is hospitalized in the southern Chinese city, Hong Kong Center for Health Protection controller Leung Ting-hung told reporters at a press conference.

The Uruguayan government Friday launched a campaign warning that "all drug use has risks," days before the South American nation becomes the first country in the world to legalize marijuana.

Uruguayan lawmakers will vote Tuesday to green-light a marijuana bill, part of a social experiment designed to combat drug-trafficking.

A diet of the healthiest food costs about $1.50 (1.10 euros) more per person per day than the least healthiest, according to a survey of 10 wealthy and middle-income countries published on Thursday.

Researchers carried out an overview of 27 previously published investigations into dietary patterns that had solid data about what people ate each day and how much it cost.

A roadblock in the brain makes reading difficult for people with dyslexia, a new study suggested Thursday, contradicting long-held opinion.

The findings in the U.S. journal Science add to an ongoing debate over whether the inherited neurological disorder is caused by faulty brain wiring or the brain's inability to understand the interaction of sounds and symbols that form language.