Six years after leprosy was declared officially eliminated in India, officials and doctors are warning that the disfiguring disease is spreading in poverty-stricken pockets of the country.

The head of the World Health Organization (WHO) in India, Nata Menabde, told Agence France Presse in an interview that nearly a third of India's districts needed urgent attention to address the spread of new infections.

European scientists have successfully tested in animals a vaccine for Hepatitis C, a debilitating viral disease that can cause liver failure and cancer, according to a study released this week.

Currently, there is no human vaccine for Hepatitis C, which is spread through contaminated blood and kills some 350,000 people worldwide each year, according to the World Health Organization.

An organic food boom in Germany is creating demand for flour ground the old way, but the country only has one person left with the skills needed to carve and maintain millstones.

According to the German organic food industry body, the BOeLW, sales of organic food in Europe's biggest economy have tripled since 2000 and are on course to exceed six billion euros ($8.4 billion) this year.

The AIDS virus is spreading like an epidemic in some Middle East and North African countries because of homosexual encounters between men, a study warned on Wednesday.

"This systematic review and data synthesis indicate that HIV epidemics appear to be emerging among MSM (men who have sex with men) in at least a few MENA countries," said a study published in PLoS Medicine.

Women who have experienced rape or other abuse have far higher rates of mental disorders and are up to 20 times more likely to attempt suicide than other females, an Australian study showed Wednesday.

The findings, reported in the Journal of the American Medical Association, showed a very strong association between exposure to gender-based violence and mental disorder, said study leader Susan Rees.

More than half of children's car seats sold in the United States contain hazardous chemicals, according to a study published Wednesday by a non-profit environmental group.

Sixty percent of 150 car seats tested by the Michigan-based Ecology Center were found to contain chemicals that can be harmful to human health such as bromine and chlorine, which points to the presence of polyvinyl chlorate (PVC).

More than half of Americans aged 12 and up drink alcohol, a quarter binge-drank in the past month, and one in 14 teens has used marijuana, a U.S. government agency says in a report on substance abuse.

Around 52 percent of 137,436 Americans interviewed in 2008 and 2009 said they had a tipple in the past month, the report released late last month by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) says.

Ignoring the red-and-white danger sign, Sri Mulyati walks slowly to the train tracks outside Indonesia's bustling capital, lies down and stretches her body across the rails.

Like the nearly dozen others lined up along the track, the 50-year-old diabetes patient has all but given up on doctors and can't afford the expensive medicines they prescribe.

An Australian woman who lived for more than 15 years with a grapefruit-sized surgical sponge sewn inside her after abdominal surgery was to sue her doctor for negligence, a report said Monday.

Helen O'Hagan claims the sponge was left in her abdominal cavity by surgeon Samuel Sakker during a 1992 colectomy, according to the Sydney Morning Herald.

Some 30 Vietnamese children have been hospitalized after eating disinfectant accidentally mixed with milk during snack time at an unlicensed preschool.

Dr. Huynh Thi Nguyet Phuong of the General Hospital in Thuan An town in southern Binh Duong province says the 3-year-old children suffered Chloramine-B poisoning Friday. Three were seriously ill with vomiting and convulsions, but all were released by Monday.