Four suspected cases of the human variant of mad cow disease, one of them fatal, have emerged in western Canada, local media reported Friday.

The degenerative brain disease Creutzfeldt-Jakob is so rare that it is odd for four suspected cases to crop up at once, CBC News quoted British Columbia Provincial Health Officer Perry Kendall as saying.

A review into the care of a pregnant Indian dentist who died after being denied an abortion in Ireland identified a number of failings when its conclusions were published on Thursday.

The death of 31-year-old Savita Halappanavar in October ignited calls for new legislation governing abortion in predominantly Catholic Ireland.

U.S. authorities on Thursday warned makers of medical devices and hospital networks to step up efforts to guard against potential cyber attacks.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration said implanted devices, which could include pacemakers or defibrillators, could be connected to networks that are vulnerable to hackers.

A Mozambique medical strike now in its third week has paralysed all but essential services at some of the country's busiest hospitals, which are being forced to turn away desperate patients.

"Every day I come and there are no doctors," says gynaecology patient, Virginia Sitoe, who has been waiting since May 24 for test results to schedule a much-needed operation.

The government of Canada's mostly French-speaking Quebec province on Wednesday unveiled legislation allowing terminally ill patients to kill themselves with a doctor's help.

The bill, expected to be passed into law as early as September, would make Quebec the first province in Canada to effectively legalize assisted suicide and set the stage for a jurisdictional row with Ottawa.

Giving injecting drug users a daily pill against HIV nearly halved their risk of infection by the AIDS virus, a pioneering study published on Thursday said.

The four-year research strengthens convictions that antiretroviral drugs can prevent HIV infection, rather than simply treat the virus after someone has been infected, it said.

A 10-year-old American girl whose dire need for a lung transplant catapulted her into the political spotlight underwent potentially life-saving surgery Wednesday after a donor was found.

"We are thrilled to share that Sarah is out of surgery. Her doctors are very pleased with both her progress during the procedure and her prognosis for recovery," said the child's mother, Janet Ruddock Murnaghan.

Britain's Department of Health will on Wednesday unveil a new system for coordinating cancer treatment which it hopes will save thousands of lives each year, the Times reported.

Data from millions of patient records has been brought together in the biggest cancer registration database, giving specialists instant access to detailed clinical data.

Britain will urge the G8 to coordinate plans to prevent a spread of drug-resistant microbes, which it fears could cause a public health crisis, the government said Tuesday.

Science Minister David Willetts said Britain would call for a joint clamp down on the over-prescription of antibiotics and for cross-border cooperation in fighting the spread of bacterial diseases at next week's G8 summit in Northern Ireland.

Patients who successfully battled cancer during childhood face an extraordinarily high rate of chronic illness during their grown-up years, according to study published Tuesday.

The research released by the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) tracked 1,700 adult survivors of childhood cancer, and found that the vast majority were combating one or more chronic ailments.