Brazilian Health Minister Alexandre Padilla on Thursday warned that Rio de Janeiro faced a major dengue epidemic, although he said the virus strain prevalent was not fatal.

"I believe that Rio could this year face one of the worst dengue epidemics in its history, in terms of number of cases," he said in a television interview.

One in 10 children in the United States are living with a mother or father who has an alcohol problem and many reside with two parents who are afflicted, a government report said Thursday.

According to the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) 7.5 million children -- about 10.5 percent of the U.S. population under age 18 -- live with a parent who suffered an alcohol use disorder.

"Got milk?" is getting to be a difficult question when it comes to organic.

Because even as more consumers are willing to pay premium prices for organic milk, supermarkets are having trouble keeping it on the shelves as high feed and fuel prices have left some organic dairy farmers unable to keep up with demand.

German scientists have developed a new way to make a key malaria drug that they say could easily quadruple production and drop the price significantly, increasing the availability of treatment for a disease that kills hundreds of thousands every year.

Chemists at the Max Planck Institute take the waste product from the creation of the drug artemisinin — artemisinic acid — and convert it into the drug itself.

The discovery that a fake version of the widely used cancer medicine Avastin is circulating in the United States is raising new fears that the multibillion-dollar drug-counterfeiting trade is increasingly making inroads in the U.S.

The criminal practice has largely been relegated to poor countries with lax regulations. But with more medicines and drug ingredients for sale in the U.S. being manufactured overseas, American authorities are afraid more counterfeits will find their way into this country, putting patients' lives at risk.

Brazil's conjoined twins Israel and Levi were separated successfully at Maternity Hospital of Goiania in a surgery that lasted nearly 10 hours, the twins' doctor told Agence France Presse.

The 14-month-old boys were joined at the hip and abdomen. They shared intestines, a bladder and genitalia, said pediatric surgeon Zacharias Calil, a specialist in separating conjoined twins.

About 450 million children will be physically and mentally stunted over the next 15 years unless the world takes action to tackle malnutrition, a report from Save the Children warned Wednesday.

Every hour, 300 children die due to a lack of nutrients in their diet, while those who survive are permanently damaged in a way that impacts on their lives and the economic prospects of their countries, the British charity said.

Antibiotics provide little help to people with sinus infections, according to a study released Tuesday which suggested doctors are prescribing the drugs too often.

The study appearing in Wednesday's Journal of the American Medical Association found that using the common antibiotic amoxicillin for patients with acute uncomplicated rhinosinusitis "did not result in a significant difference in symptoms compared to patients who received placebo."

Ninety-four farms in northern France have been hit by a novel virus, first uncovered in Germany last year, that strikes cattle, sheep and goats, a French research agency reported on Tuesday.

The Schmallenberg virus, named after the town in Germany where it first surfaced, causes diarrhea and falling milk production in cattle and fetal defects in lambs, calves and kids, the Centre for International Cooperation in Agricultural Development Research (Cirad) said.

Four pharmaceutical companies that make a crucial cancer drug for children that's suddenly in short supply are being urged to try to quickly step up production to prevent unnecessary deaths.

A senator and three doctor groups late Monday sent the pleas to the companies, saying that hospitals will run out of the drug in days to weeks, increasing chances that young patients who might otherwise survive will die.