A fire that killed 36 patients at a dilapidated wooden psychiatric facility has exposed Russia's failure to move on from the old Soviet system of punitive psychiatry used against political dissidents.

Two staff and 36 patients -- apparently too sedated or disorientated to escape from their mass dormitory with barred windows -- perished in the fire that broke out on Friday.

China's deadly outbreak of H7N9 bird flu has spread to a province in the country's south, the government said Friday, marking the second announcement in two days of a case in a new location.

The local health bureau in the southeastern province of Fujian said a 65-year-old man was confirmed to have the virus.

More than 100 doctors from around the world have signed a letter decrying the high cost of cancer drugs which reach $100,000 per year or more, and calling for pharmaceutical companies to ease prices.

The United States represents the "extreme end of high prices," leading to healthcare costs that amounted in 2011 to 2.7 trillion, or 18 percent of U.S. GDP, compared to six to nine percent in Europe, the doctors wrote in the journal Blood.

The latest bad news in the hunt for an AIDS vaccine: The government halted a large U.S. study on Thursday, saying the experimental shots are not preventing HIV infection.

Nor did the shots reduce the amount of the AIDS virus in the blood when people who'd been vaccinated later became infected, the National Institutes of Health said.

Latin America faces a cancer epidemic unless governments act quickly to improve health care systems and treat the poor, scientists said.

The researchers pointed to around 13 deaths for every 22 cancer cases in the region, compared to around 13 deaths for every 37 cases in the United States and around 13 deaths for every 30 cases in Europe.

A dengue fever outbreak in the Pacific islands of New Caledonia has killed three people, officials said Friday, after the World Health Organization raised alarm over the spread of the virus.

A 55-year-old woman from the northern village of Pouembout who was taken to hospital with haemorrhaging became the latest victim of the outbreak, which has killed two other women, aged 55 and 36, since December.

Not so long ago, there was a certain image associated with being vegetarian. It usually involved Birkenstock sandals, lentil loaf and an agenda.

There still are plenty of all three in the meatless movement, but a growing number of Americans are finding they can have cauliflower and kale at the center of the plate without a side of ideology.

Chinese researchers reporting in The Lancet on Thursday confirmed poultry as a source of H7N9 flu among humans but said they found no evidence of person-to-person transmission.

A probe into four cases of human H7N9 influenza in eastern Zhejiang province determined that all the patients had been exposed to poultry, either through their occupation or through visiting so-called wet poultry markets.

Health officials in Somalia are rolling out a new five-in-one vaccine for children that they say will save thousands of lives.

Meanwhile, in Abu Dhabi Thursday, global health leaders unveiled a six-year plan to eradicate polio. Close to three-quarters of the plan's projected $5.5 billion cost has already been pledged.

China's state news agency says one person died and 20 others were sickened after a chef mistakenly added pesticide instead of a sauce as he was making lunch.

Xinhua News Agency said in a brief dispatch Thursday that the chef was among those who fell ill after eating the lunch at a construction site in northern China's Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region. The others who were sickened were migrant workers. Two people were in critical condition.