Owning exotic reptiles such as snakes, chameleons, iguanas and geckos could place infants at risk of salmonella infection, according to a British study published on Monday.

Researchers in the southwestern English county of Cornwall found that out of 175 cases of salmonella in children under five over a three-year period, 27 percent occurred in homes which had reptile pets.

An unlicensed Cambodian doctor was charged on Monday over an apparent mass HIV infection in a remote village after admitting he reused needles when treating patients, officials said.

Hundreds of panicked residents of Roka village in the western province of Battambang have flocked for testing since news of the infections emerged two weeks ago, with more than 100 people believed to have been infected.

The lines snaking into Bangladesh's overwhelmed hospitals are often so long, says Nusrat Hussein Kiwan, that they extend into the street outside -- too many patients seeking too few quality doctors.

So, through a Google search, the wife of a Bangladeshi construction executive chose a Malaysian hospital for her heart bypass surgery.

Asbestos waste spills in a gray gash down the flank of a lush green hill above tribal villages that are home to thousands in eastern India. Three decades after the mines were abandoned, nothing has been done to remove the enormous, hazardous piles of broken rocks and powdery dust left behind.

In Roro Village and nearby settlements, people who never worked in the mines are dying of lung disease. Yet in a country that treats asbestos as a savior that provides cheap building materials for the poor, no one knows the true number and few care to ask.

China's health ministry has promised to provide medical care and a living allowance for an eight-year-old HIV-positive boy targeted by villagers for expulsion, state media reported Monday, in a case that has drawn widespread condemnation.

Some 200 residents -- including the child's own grandfather -- signed a petition last week to expel him from their village in the southwestern province of Sichuan to "protect villagers' health", sparking anger online at perceived prejudice and ignorance in the countryside. 

Patients with chronic hepatitis C have a new option for treating the liver-damaging virus, with the approval of a combination treatment developed by AbbVie.

The Food and Drug Administration on Friday approved the sale of a packaged treatment called Viekira Pak made by AbbVie Inc. of North Chicago, Illinois.

Mozambique has passed a law permitting women to terminate unwanted pregnancies under specified conditions, a move hailed by activists in a country where clandestine abortions account for a large number of maternal deaths.

President Armando Guebuza on Thursday quietly signed into law a revised penal code bill that eases prohibitions in abortion regulations.

U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon arrived in the Guinean capital Conakry on Saturday on the last day of his tour of west African countries hit by the world's worst outbreak of Ebola.

The U.N. chief was greeted at the airport by Guinea's foreign and health ministers Francois Louceny Fall and Remy Lamah.

The grandfather of a Chinese HIV-positive boy has defended his support for a petition to banish him from their village, media reported Saturday, in a case that has sparked intense soul-searching in China.

Some 200 residents -- including the eight-year-old's own grandfather -- signed a petition to expel him from their village in China's southwestern Sichuan province, in a bid to "protect villagers' health".

A listeria outbreak believed to originate from commercially packaged caramel apples has killed at least four people in the United States and sickened 28 people since November, officials said Friday.

Listeria monocytogenes is caused by a bacteria and can cause life-threatening illness. It is particularly dangerous for children, the elderly and pregnant women, in whom it can cause miscarriage.