Congo is struggling to contain its biggest mpox outbreak, and scientists say a new form of the disease detected in a mining town might more easily spread among people.

Since January, Congo has reported more than 4,500 suspected mpox cases and nearly 300 deaths, numbers that have roughly tripled from the same period last year, according to the World Health Organization. Congo recently declared the outbreak across the country a health emergency.

Regular mammograms to screen for breast cancer should start younger, at age 40, according to an influential U.S. task force. Women ages 40 to 74 should get screened every other year, the group said.

Previously, the task force had said women could choose to start breast cancer screening as young as 40, with a stronger recommendation that they get the exams every two years from age 50 through 74.

U.S. health and agriculture officials are ramping up testing and tracking of bird flu in dairy cows in an urgent effort to understand — and stop — the growing outbreak.

So far, the risk to humans remains low, officials said, but scientists are wary that the virus could change to spread more easily among people.

When a small number of cases of locally transmitted malaria were found in the United States last year, it was a reminder that climate change is reviving or migrating the threat of some diseases. But across the African continent malaria has never left, killing or sickening millions of people.

Take Funmilayo Kotun, a 66-year-old resident of Makoko, an informal neighborhood in Nigeria's Lagos city. Its ponds of dirty water provide favorable breeding conditions for malaria-spreading mosquitoes. Kotun can't afford insecticide-treated bed nets that cost between $7 and $21 each, much less antimalarial medications or treatment.

Doctors have transplanted a pig kidney into a New Jersey woman who was near death, part of a dramatic pair of surgeries that also stabilized her failing heart.

Lisa Pisano's combination of heart and kidney failure left her too sick to qualify for a traditional transplant, and out of options. Then doctors at NYU Langone Health devised a novel one-two punch: Implant a mechanical pump to keep her heart beating and days later transplant a kidney from a genetically modified pig.

The European Union announced on Wednesday an investigation into whether China is using unfair methods to deprive companies in Europe of access to its market for medical devices ranging from hypodermic needles to high-tech scanners.

The probe launched by the European Commission — the EU's executive branch as well as its trade and competition watchdog — is the latest attempt to help companies gain the kind of access to China's vast markets that Chinese firms enjoy in Europe.

The hunt for the origins of COVID-19 has gone dark in China, the victim of political infighting after a series of stalled and thwarted attempts to find the source of the virus that killed millions and paralyzed the world for months.

The Chinese government froze meaningful domestic and international efforts to trace the virus from the first weeks of the outbreak, despite statements supporting open scientific inquiry, an Associated Press investigation found. That pattern continues to this day, with labs closed, collaborations shattered, foreign scientists forced out and Chinese researchers barred from leaving the country.

The World Health Organization voiced alarm Thursday at the growing spread of H5N1 bird flu to new species, including humans, who face an "extraordinarily high" mortality rate.

"This remains I think an enormous concern," the UN health agency's chief scientist Jeremy Farrar told reporters in Geneva.

The World Health Organization on Thursday announced a new, catch-all terminology for pathogens that transmit through the air, erasing a distinction that caused dangerous confusion during the Covid pandemic.

During the Covid-19 crisis the standoff between experts arguing over whether the SARS-CoV-2 virus spread through droplets or through an aerosol mist proved a crucial public health challenge.

The number of new prostate cancer cases around the world will more than double over the next two decades as poorer countries catch up with the ageing of richer nations, according to a Lancet report published Thursday.

"Our findings suggest that the number of new cases annually will rise from 1.4 million in 2020 to 2.9 million by 2040," said the medical journal, based on a study of demographic changes.