A common type of malaria that used to be powerless to infect certain groups of Africans is becoming more potent, putting tens of millions of people at risk, scientists said Friday.

Caused by a mosquito-borne parasite called Plasmodium vivax, the infection is rarely fatal but can lay dormant in the liver and cause chronic recurrences if left untreated.

Thirty-nine House Democrats defected Friday to vote for legislation that would gut significant portions of the new U.S. health care law, the strongest sign yet of party anger over "Obamacare."

Should the Democrat-run Senate approve the measure, which would allow insurers to offer policies that do not meet requirements of the new health care reforms, the White House has said President Barack Obama would veto it.

Alba Diaz runs a special kind of hotel. Her guests are foreigners seeking plastic surgery in a Colombian city that's become a magnet for folks looking for a nip and tuck.

Working in a posh neighborhood of Cali, Colombia's third largest city, the 55-year-old Diaz pampers her clients, from the time they get off the plane throughout their stay at her clinic.

Mahmud Zubairu scrutinizes the computer screen in front of him, watching the progress of healthcare workers as they fan out across Nigeria's northern Kano state where polio runs high.

The dozens of teams are going door-to-door to immunize every child aged under-five, as part of an aggressive push to eradicate the debilitating disease.

A French court on Thursday found German safety standards firm TUV liable in a global scare over defective breast implants and ordered the company to compensate distributors and victims.

The court in the southern city of Toulon ruled that TUV Rheinland had "neglected its duties of checking and vigilance" after having certified that implants made by Poly Implant Prothese (PIP) conformed to European safety rules -- even though they were subsequently found to have been made of substandard, industrial-grade silicone gel.

British gynaecologists warned on Friday that increasing numbers of teenage girls and women are undergoing genital cosmetic surgery, driven in part by unrealistic images of how they should look based on pornography.

The state-funded National Health Service (NHS) performed more than 2,000 labial reduction procedures -- labiaplasties -- in 2010, a five-fold increase in ten years, according to the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists (RCOG).

A 29-year-old man has died from bird flu in Cambodia and a toddler is critically ill with the virus after carrying sick and dead poultry from a market, health authorities said Thursday.

The man died in early November in western Pailin province near the border with Thailand after being admitted to hospital with a fever, the World Health Organization and Cambodia's Ministry of Health said in a joint statement.

Kuwait has reported its second case of the deadly MERS coronavirus for a man who just returned from abroad, the health ministry said.

In a statement cited by the official KUNA agency late Wednesday, the ministry said the new case was for a 52-year-old Kuwaiti national who was in a stable condition.

A healthy baby boy was born in eastern Hungary after his brain dead mother was kept alive for about three months to bring him to term, a hospital said Wednesday.

"The baby is already growing up at home, with his family. He was delivered by caesarean during the summer," Bela Furedi, president of the Debrecen University's medical science center, told journalists.

Only 106,000 people enrolled in the new U.S. health plan in its first month and only a quarter did so on a faulty government website, in early failures for President Barack Obama's top domestic achievement.

Government figures published Wednesday were the first official snapshot of the progress of "Obamacare" which has been plagued by glitches since it debuted on October 1.