Medicine's final line of defense against deadly disease has been breached, raising the specter of a global epidemic, scientists say, after finding bacteria resistant to last-resort antibiotics.

The discovery could herald a virtual return to the Dark Ages, with doctors unable to control common germs like E. Coli, rolling back centuries of medical progress.

Indonesia's health ministry has apologized after a printing error led to posters being put up claiming that HIV can be transmitted through mosquito bites, swimming and sneezing, an official said Wednesday.

Social media was flooded with angry comments after the ministry's attempt to launch a campaign to debunk myths about HIV backfired badly in a country where people with the virus are much stigmatized.

Antibiotic resistance, which can turn common ailments into killers, has reached dangerous levels worldwide, the World Health Organization warned Monday, saying users still know too little about how antibiotics work.

Antibiotic resistance happens when bugs become immune to existing drugs, allowing minor injuries and common infections to become deadly.

With saturation media coverage of the Paris attacks, parents are asking themselves if they should talk to their children about the killings -- and how they should go about it.

Most child psychology experts believe that children should be told, but warn that parents have to be careful not to allow them to be overwhelmed by fear or horror at what happened.

It's a disturbing scene: a Brazilian rape victim arrives at the hospital seeking an abortion, but first she must prove she was raped and undergo invasive questioning.

That is the proposal contained in a bill introduced by the controversial speaker of Brazil's lower house, Eduardo Cunha, that has sparked protests by outraged women across the country.

Autism affects one in 45 children in the United States, almost twice the rate from a few years ago, said a survey Friday that uses a new approach to assess the frequency of the developmental disorder.

The latest figures may reflect a more accurate picture of autism spectrum disorder, said the report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's (CDC) National Center for Health Statistics, and so does not necessarily mean that there is a ballooning autism epidemic. 

Thousands of men around the world are to be sterilized Friday in what organizers have dubbed a global "vasectomy-athon", to encourage men to take a bigger role in family planning.

Some 750 doctors in 25 countries are to perform the procedure on over 3,000 volunteers to mark World Vasectomy Day, with many operations being provided free or at discounted rates.

Doctors at a Bangladesh hospital were treating a baby girl born with two heads on Thursday, medical officials and the newborn's father said.

The baby was born late Wednesday and is now being treated for breathing difficulties after being shifted to the intensive care unit of the country's largest hospital in Dhaka.

More than 230,000 people received a first dose of cholera vaccine in a massive campaign to combat an outbreak of the disease in Iraq, the World Health Organization said Monday.

Over 2,500 cases of cholera have been confirmed in Iraq since the outbreak began, causing two confirmed deaths, according to the WHO.

Omani health authorities have urged caution after a woman who had visited Iraq was found to be infected with cholera, local media reported on Monday. 

"The Omani woman who was diagnosed with the disease had visited Iraq recently," the local Times of Oman daily quoted the health ministry as saying.