A cholera epidemic in Burundi, the longest in the small central African country's history, has killed at least 17 people in 10 months, a top health official told Agence France Presse Monday.

"Burundi has been affected since last October by a cholera epidemic," said Liboire Ngirigi, director general of public health.

Russian patient Valentina Micheeva (left) talks to her doctor Irina Ivanova four days after her hip operation at the Coxa hospital in Tampere, Finland. Coxa HealthCareFinland, together with other …more

Sitting on a hospital bed with a slight smile on her face, Valentina Micheeva looks a decade younger than her 80 years as she explains how four days earlier she had her hip replaced -- not in her native Russia but at a clinic in Finland.

The first time Miriam Lipton had breast cancer, her thick hair fell out two weeks after starting chemotherapy. The second time breast cancer struck, Lipton gave her scalp a deep chill and kept much of her hair — making her fight for survival seem a bit easier.

Hair loss is one of chemotherapy's most despised side effects, not because of vanity but because it fuels stigma, revealing to the world an illness that many would rather keep private.

Blind mice have been able to see once more in a laboratory exploit that marks a further boost for the fast-moving field of retinal therapy, according to a study published on Sunday.

Scientists in Britain used stem cells -- early-stage, highly versatile cells -- taken from mice embryos, and cultured them in a lab dish so that they differentiated into immature photoreceptors, the light-catching cells in the retina.

Television sets injure one child every 30 minutes in America, and the rate of emergency room visits is increasing with the popularity of flat-screen TVs, a study said Monday.

Just over half (52 percent) of all TV injuries for those under 18 from 1990 to 2011 were due to the equipment falling and hitting the patient, said the study in the journal Pediatrics.

A 61-year-old woman from northern China was confirmed Saturday as having contracted the deadly H7N9 bird flu virus, state media reported.

The woman, from the city of Langfang in Hebei province, developed a cough and fever on July 10 and four days later was given a diagnosis of severe pneumonia, the official Xinhua news agency reported, citing a Beijing municipal health bureau statement.

Childrens' toys need to comply as of Saturday with a new Europe-wide ban on dozens of chemical substances scientists say could trigger cancer, harm fertility or unleash allergies, the European Commission said.

"Substances which are carcinogenic, mutagenic or toxic to reproduction as well as 55 allergenic fragrances are now banned from use in toys," the EU's executive arm said Friday.

Around 2,000 people who have worked at Japan's wrecked Fukushima nuclear plant face a heightened risk of thyroid cancer, its operator said Friday.

Tokyo Electric Power (TEPCO) said 1,973 people -- around 10 percent of those employed in emergency crews involved in the clean-up since the meltdowns -- were believed to have been exposed to enough radiation to cause potential problems.

Alcohol-related deaths of women born in the 1970s have "disproportionately increased" in the last decade, according to a study of three cities in England and Scotland published Friday.

Researchers called for urgent action to tackle what they said was a "worrying trend" in rising deaths from alcohol misuse by women in their 30s and 40s, unseen among men of the same age group.

These viruses are so big they might just be your ancestors.

Two newly discovered viruses are twice as large as the previous record-holders and may represent a completely new life form, French scientists reported in the U.S. journal Science.