Lawmakers in the West African nation of The Gambia have rejected a highly controversial push to try overturn a ban on female genital mutilation.

Gambia in 2015 banned the ritual forced on millions of girls in Africa, the Middle East and Asia, but it remains widespread.

U.S. officials have reported four new human cases of bird flu, bringing the total to eight.

The four infected people are farm workers, all working on the same poultry facility, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The European Union has approved Sanofi's blockbuster drug Dupixent for the treatment of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), the French pharmaceutical giant said on Wednesday.

The debilitating disease, sometimes called "smoker's lungs", is the third-leading cause of death worldwide, according to the World Health Organization.

A new deadlier strain of mpox that transmits more easily between people is killing children and causing miscarriages in the Democratic Republic of Congo and may have already spread to neighboring countries, researchers have warned.

World leaders, health groups and pharmaceutical firms announced $1.2 billion in funding at a summit Thursday to produce vaccines in Africa, which is facing numerous health crises including rising cholera outbreaks.

The fight against female genital mutilation (FGM) is being undermined by families taking girls to other countries to put them through the procedure, the United Nations warned Friday.

It called for concerted global action to tackle cross-border and transnational FGM, including so-called "vacation cutting" by families in the West.

A long-standing resolution urging WHO action on towering health needs in the Palestinian territories hung in the balance Friday, after Israel secured an amendment requiring the text to mention hostages held in Gaza.

A Pfizer medicine has been shown to greatly reduce cancer progression and improve survival outcomes for people in the advanced stages of a form of lung cancer, results published Friday showed.

Lorlatinib, which is already approved and available under the brand name Lobrena in the United States, was tested in a clinical trial of hundreds of people with anaplastic lymphoma kinase (ALK)-positive advanced non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC).

Between the sweat smell, fluorescent lights and omnipresent television screens, April Herring has never connected with going to the gym.

Instead, she runs, bikes, hikes, plays tennis, pickleball and football — anything to get her exercise outside as often as possible.

Extreme weather events have hit parts of Africa relentlessly in the last three years, with tropical storms, floods and drought causing crises of hunger and displacement. They leave another deadly threat behind them: some of the continent's worst outbreaks of cholera.

In southern and East Africa, more than 6,000 people have died and nearly 350,000 cases have been reported since a series of cholera outbreaks began in late 2021.