An Emirati woman has sought leave to have a sex change operation in what would be a first for the United Arab Emirates, newspapers reported on Tuesday.

The application to the court in the UAE capital Abu Dhabi comes after a change in the law took effect earlier this month legalising gender reassignment surgery. 

An outbreak of water-borne disease has killed at least 19 people and sickened scores more in Sudan's rain-ravaged states of Blue Nile and Kasala, a minister said Monday.

A terminally ill child has become the first minor to be euthanised in Belgium since age restrictions on such mercy killings in the country were lifted in 2014, a newspaper reported Saturday.

Doctors in India smuggled a desperately ill patient across state borders under cover of darkness to receive a liver transplant after police said violent protests would make a journey by ambulance too dangerous.

E-cigarettes may have helped some 18,000 smokers in England kick the tobacco habit last year, according to research released Wednesday.

Scientists said Monday they had found a suitable animal model for testing new Zika drugs -- a monkey whose offspring suffers brain damage similar to human fetuses exposed to the virus.

While the world awaits a Zika vaccine, the first ever injection against dengue fever is spreading, with Mexico becoming next week the latest country where people can get the shot.

French pharmaceutical giant Sanofi is presenting its Dengvaxia vaccine to doctors at an event in eastern Mexico on Saturday, while people aged nine to 45 will be able to get the shot from their physicians from Monday.

The world's first face transplant recipient, Frenchwoman Isabelle Dinoire, died of a cancer unrelated to medicine she was taking to stop her body rejecting the graft, doctors said Wednesday.

Maimed by her dog, Dinoire received part of a brain-dead person's face in a historic operation in 2005, aged 38. 

U.S. chain Pizza Hut's Indonesian operation insisted its restaurants were safe Tuesday after it was accused of using ingredients up to six months past their expiry date.

At least 2.6 billion people, over a third of the global population, live in parts of Africa, Asia and the Pacific where Zika could gain a new foothold, researchers warned Friday, with 1.2 billion at risk in India alone.

These are people who reside in as-yet unaffected parts of the world with the right climate and abundant mosquitoes for the virus to settle, spread and propagate an epidemic like the one besetting the Americas and Caribbean, they said.