Scores of women were dumped unconscious in a field after a mass sterilization in eastern India because there was no room in hospital for them to recuperate, medical officials said Thursday.

The women had all undergone surgical procedures at a hospital in the Malda district of West Bengal, around 360 kilometers (220 miles) north of Kolkata, which officials admitted was not equipped to accommodate such a large number of patients.

Artificially-sweetened sodas have been linked to a higher risk of Type 2 diabetes for women than sodas sweetened with ordinary sugar, according to French research unveiled on Thursday.

"Contrary to conventional thinking, the risk of diabetes is higher with 'light' beverages compared with 'regular' sweetened drinks," the National Institute of Health and Medical Research (Inserm) said.

Medical aid agency Doctors Without Borders warned Thursday of a "humanitarian emergency" in strife-hit western Myanmar with tens of thousands of people unable to access urgently needed medical care.

Doctors Without Borders (Medecins Sans Frontieres) said its teams on the ground in Rakhine State faced threats, hostility and accusations of a bias towards the Rohingya Muslim minority group.

Researchers have discovered the first U.S. cases of whooping cough caused by a germ that may be resistant to the vaccine.

Health officials are looking into whether cases like the dozen found in Philadelphia might be one reason America just had its worst year for whooping cough in six decades. The new bug was previously reported in Japan, France and Finland.

After years of research, the first bionic eye has seen the light of day in the United States, giving hope to the blind around the world.

Developed by Second Sight Medical Products, the Argus II Retinal Prosthesis System has helped more than sixty people recover partial sight, with some experiencing better results than others.

With German sausages, French duck breasts and homegrown chicken, Francis Menezes is cashing in on the growing appetite for meat among Indians -- even in one of Mumbai's most strictly vegetarian areas.

In the upmarket neighborhood of Malabar Hill, numerous shops, restaurants and even some apartment blocks remain meat-free.

For pregnant women, breathing in air pollution from vehicles, heating and coal power plants increases the risk of having a low birth weight baby, an international study said Wednesday.

The research, the most extensive of its kind on the link between air pollution and fetal development, found that the higher the pollution, the greater the rate of children born with a low weight. It was published in the U.S. journal Environmental Health Perspectives.

Men who watch television for 20 hours per week have almost half the sperm count of those who watch very little television or none at all, according to a study published on Tuesday.

U.S. researchers recruited 189 young men aged between 18 to 22, questioned them about their exercise, diet and TV habits and asked them to provide a sperm sample.

U.S. war veterans on Monday suggested meditation to help heal the post-war mental disturbances that afflict a growing number of American soldiers, including possibly the ex-Marine who gunned down the country's most famous sniper over the weekend.

Meditation might sound an unlikely activity for men trained in killing people and blowing things up in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Scientists on Monday said that for the first time they had printed 3D objects using human embryonic stem cells, furthering the quest to fabricate transplantable organs.

Once fine-tuned, the technology should allow scientists to make three-dimensional human tissue in the lab, eliminating the need for organ donation or testing on animals, they reported.