French health care giant Sanofi Pasteur will soon test a vaccine against dengue fever in India amid concerns about the increasingly global spread of the disease, reports said Monday.

The vaccine will be tried on about 120 adults followed by trials on children before it can be made available internationally as soon as 2015, the Times of India newspaper said.

Tens of thousands of Spanish doctors, nurses and hospital staff marched through the capital Madrid on Sunday to denounce budget cuts and privatisations, the latest protest against deeply unpopular austerity measures.

Dressed in white, the protesters chanted "Public health!" and "Health is a right. We are going to fight."

Europe's top drug regulator has recommended approval for the first vaccine against meningitis B, made by Novartis AG.

There are five types of bacterial meningitis. While vaccines exist to protect against the other four, none has previously been licensed for type B meningitis. In Europe, type B is the most common, causing 3,000 to 5,000 cases every year.

The lives of at least 750,000 premature babies could be saved every year by taking simple and inexpensive steps to limit preterm birth, the world's largest killer of newborns, U.N. health experts said Friday.

"There are many interventions that can save lives and improve the quality of these babies' lives that are not high-skilled intensive care but that are simple interventions," said Elizabeth Mason, who heads the World Health Organization's Department of Maternal, Newborn, Child and Adolescent Health.

Improving sanitation and building more toilets could save millions of lives around the world and would remove an important source of inequality, the U.N. said Friday ahead of World Toilet Day.

“Eliminating inequalities can start in the most unlikely of places: a toilet,” said Catarina de Albuquerque, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the human right to safe drinking water and sanitation.

The world's largest agency that deals with global migration says cholera is again on the rise in Haiti.

The International Organization for Migration says Haitian officials have confirmed 3,593 cholera cases and another 837 suspected cases since Hurricane Sandy's passage.

India's rural development minister said Friday the country's public health system had "collapsed" in a blunt assessment of his government's failure to extend a social safety net for the poor.

Jairam Ramesh, known as a maverick with often outspoken views, stressed that 70 percent of spending on health was out of people's own pockets, making it the single most important reason for indebtedness in rural areas.

The pros and cons of meat-eating may be the subject of debate for nutritionists, but one Indian school textbook is clear: a fleshy diet will make you lie, steal and even commit sex crimes.

The unusual moral guidance appeared in a school book for 11-year-olds, purporting to offer education on issues from health and hygiene to sex education and exercise, the NDTV news channel reported.

The United States saw a dramatic rise in the number of adults suffering from diabetes between 1995 and 2010, according to official statistics released Thursday.

The prevalence of the disease increased by at least 50 percent in 42 of the country's 50 states. In 18 of those, the rate at least doubled, according to a study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The Food and Drug Administration is investigating reports of 13 deaths possibly linked to so-called "energy shots" and cautioning consumers to talk to their doctors before they take them or other energy drinks.

The agency has received 92 reports that cite illnesses, hospitalizations and deaths after consumption of a product marketed as 5-Hour Energy. The FDA has also received reports that cited the highly caffeinated Monster Energy Drink in five deaths and one non-fatal heart attack.