Vietnam on Thursday reported its first human death from bird flu in nearly two years, as the virus also claimed the life of a toddler in Cambodia.

Concerns about avian influenza have risen in the region after China in late December reported its first fatality from the H5N1 virus in 18 months, but Vietnamese authorities said there was no need to be alarmed.

A long-term fall in the global abortion rate has tapered off and the number of unsafe pregnancy terminations is rising worryingly, according to a report published by The Lancet on Thursday.

Between 1995 and 2003, the number of abortions around the world for every 1,000 women aged between 15 and 44 fell from 35 to 29.

The Indian government on Tuesday dispatched a team of medical experts to the financial capital, Mumbai, to assess reports of a handful of cases of apparently untreatable tuberculosis.

The Ministry of Health and Family Welfare said senior doctors from its Central TB Division and the World Health Organization had been sent to the city to meet public health officials to "ascertain the facts" of the cases.

An exceptionally long-running investigation has backed use of the Pill to ease menstruation pain, according to a study published Wednesday.

The findings come from health research spanning 30 years, gathering more than 1,400 Swedish women born in 1962, 1972 and 1982.

America's obesity epidemic is proving to be as stubborn as those maddening love handles, and shows no sign of reversing course. More than one-third of adults and almost 17 percent of children were obese in 2009-2010, echoing results since 2003, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported Tuesday.

"It's good that we didn't see increases. On the other hand, we didn't see any decreases in any group," said CDC researcher Cynthia Ogden.

German researchers announced Tuesday they had discovered a process to make the most effective anti-malaria drug cheaper and easier to produce in large life-saving quantities.

The breakthrough offers hope to the more than 200 million malaria sufferers worldwide, especially in poor countries, by making artemisinin more affordable, the Max Planck Society said.

Researchers at Weill Cornell Medical College in Qatar (WCMC-Q) have made a possible advancement in the way ovarian cancer is treated.

Using the latest techniques and taking a new approach involving studying a smaller sample and deeper analysis of the genetic abnormalities of the metastasized lesions, researchers found clear differences between the genetic expression of the primary ovarian cancer and the metastasized lesions.

The government is setting what it calls an ambitious goal for Alzheimer's disease: Development of effective ways to treat and prevent the mind-destroying illness by 2025.

The Obama administration is developing the first National Alzheimer's Plan to find better treatments for the disease and offer better day-to-day care for those afflicted.

Babies don't learn to talk just from hearing sounds. New research suggests they're lip-readers too.

It happens during that magical stage when a baby's babbling gradually changes from gibberish into syllables and eventually into that first "mama" or "dada."

The number of U.S. pedestrians who have been killed or badly injured while wearing headphones has tripled in six years, according to a study published Tuesday.

The annual tally rose from 16 in 2004 to 47 in 2011, bringing the total of cases to 116 over this period, say the authors.