Behind the brick walls of the Mycetoma Research Centre trying to unravel the mysteries of the infection is a rare story of medical success in impoverished Sudan.

With bandages on their swollen, deformed feet, patients from across the vast country arrive at the spotless facility set in a garden in the southern Khartoum district of Soba.

Beijing city health and corruption officials have launched an investigation into allegations staff at French pharmaceutical giant Sanofi bribed more than 500 Chinese doctors a total of about $280,000, state media reported Saturday.

The joint investigation will probe claims in China's 21st Century Business Herald newspaper purporting to show that company staff paid 503 doctors in 79 hospitals bribes totaling 1.69 million yuan in a bid to increase sales.

New Zealand dairy giant Fonterra, already under pressure over a global botulism scare, is facing fresh trouble over milk powder in Sri Lanka allegedly mixed with a farm chemical.

The company said Saturday it had completed a recall of two batches of milk powder under Sri Lankan government orders because of allegations it contained traces of chemical DCD.

Israel is to vaccinate all children against polio, after "thousands" of people in the south of the country were found to be carriers, Health Minister Yael German said on Saturday.

German said 98 percent of Israelis were already vaccinated but could pass the virus onto the remainder.

With her 1-day-old son propped against her in a hospital bed nursing, Qi Wenjuan says she has no desire to feed her child with infant formula.

"I don't trust baby formula," the first-time mother said, lying in the maternity ward of Beijing's Tiantan Hospital. "There are too many quality problems."

A plant extract used in Chinese herbal remedies for arthritis, gout and inflammation has been directly linked to cancer and causes a surprising number of genetic mutations, scientists said Wednesday.

The gene signature of aristolochic acid -- derived from a vine known as birthwort -- was found in tumors from 19 upper urinary tract cancer patients from Taiwan.

Researchers on Friday pointed to the Arabian camel as a possible host of the deadly human MERS virus plaguing the Middle East.

The exact origins of the virus is a riddle scientists have been working hard to solve in a bid to halt its spread, especially in the lead-up to the annual hajj pilgrimage to Saudi Arabia in October.

A new kind of malaria vaccine that mimics the effect of mosquito bites has shown early promise by offering 100 percent protection to a dozen human volunteers, researchers said Thursday.

The experimental vaccine, called PfSPZ and produced by the Maryland-based company Sanaria, contains live malaria parasites collected through a painstaking process of dissecting the salivary glands of mosquitoes.

The United States has seen a slight decline in obesity among low-income preschoolers for the first time in decades, according to government figures.

A report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found a slight decline in 19 states from 2008-2011.

Chinese scientists on Wednesday reported the first likely case of direct person-to-person transmission of the H7N9 bird flu virus that has killed over 40 people since March.

The development was "worrying" and should be closely watched, the team wrote in the British online journal bmj.com, but stressed that the virus, believed to jump from birds to people, was still inadept at spreading among humans.