Medical workers, members of the Liberian Red Cross, adjust their protective suits upon arrival in Banjol, on September 4, 2014

An Ebola vaccine could be available by November for health workers, hard-hit by the killer disease, with testing of two candidate vaccines under way, the World Health Organization said Friday.

Ecuador plans to impose a "junk food tax" on fast food restaurants, and will use the revenues to address the negative health effects on its citizens of diets laden with salt and fat.

"We are moving past poverty-related problems since the country is progressing a lot, and moving on to problems of affluence," President Rafael Correa said Thursday.

The European Union on Friday announced 140 million euros ($183 million) in funds to fight the deadly Ebola virus in West Africa, a sharp increase over its previous aid as the outbreak worsens.

The commission said the aid was necessary to boost measures to stop the "worst ever outbreak of the epidemic" from ravaging Guinea, Sierra Leone, Liberia and Nigeria.

Health experts fearing a clampdown on e-cigarettes said Friday a U.N. report on the device had exaggerated their health risk and underplayed their role as a safe alternative to tobacco.

The August 26 report by the U.N.'s World Health Organisation (WHO) said governments should ban the sale of so-called electronic cigarettes to minors, warning they posed a "serious threat" to unborn babies and young people.

Merck & Co. on Thursday won the first U.S. approval for a new kind of cancer drug with big advantages over chemotherapy and other older cancer treatments.

The Food and Drug Administration said it has granted accelerated approval to Merck's Keytruda, for treating melanoma that's spread or can't be surgically removed, in patients previously treated with another melanoma drug called Yervoy.

World health experts will meet in Geneva on Friday for the second day of urgent talks on fast-tracking experimental Ebola drugs as doctors in the worst-hit countries pleaded to be given the serums.

With no fully tested treatments for Ebola, the World Health Organization has endorsed potential cures like ZMapp to be rushed out.

Myanmar, which only recently emerged from a half-century of dictatorship and self-imposed isolation, has one of the world's worst health care systems, with tens of thousands dying each year because treatment is lacking for many diseases, including AIDS.

Though international aid has been flowing into the country since 2011, when military rulers handed over power to a nominally civilian government, the country remains one of the hardest places to get care for HIV. Of the estimated 190,000 people who lived with the virus last year, only around a third were receiving treatment, and more than 15,000 died from the disease, according to UNAIDS.

One person commits suicide every 40 seconds, an avoidable tragedy that fails to grab attention because of taboos and stigma, a UN report said Thursday.

In a study released three weeks after the apparent suicide of Hollywood great Robin Williams, the World Health Organization also warned that media reporting of suicide details raises the risk of copycat behavior.

The hospital in Liberia where three American aid workers got sick with Ebola has been overwhelmed by a surge in patients and doesn't have enough hazard suits and other supplies to keep doctors and nurses safe, a missionary couple told The Associated Press.

The latest infection — of Dr. Rick Sacra, an obstetrician who wasn't even working in the hospital's Ebola unit — shows just how critical protective gear is to containing the deadly epidemic, and how charities alone can't handle the response, they said Wednesday.

Google backed life sciences firm Calico and bio-pharmaceutical titan AbbVie on Wednesday announced an alliance to invest $1.5 billion to find ways to battle age-related diseases.

Under the agreement, the companies will combine strengths to discover, develop and bring to market new therapies for illnesses that afflict people as they get old.