Sue Barnes had no problem getting sanitary pads while she grew up in South Africa. But not every girl, she came to realise, is so lucky and their periods weigh over daily life. 

In 2010, Barnes learned that girls from poor families were skipping school each time they were menstruating, because they cannot afford sanitary pads. 

Flaws in computer modelling led to apocalyptic forecasts of how the deadly Ebola virus would spread in West Africa, specialists said.

Many of the models were off-the-shelf software that failed to take into account complexities and uncertainties in the way the disease spread in Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia, they said on Tuesday.

Ganga Kalshetty was just two years old when India declared itself leprosy-free in 2005, giving her family hope that she would be spared the disfiguring disease and its social stigma.

But the last decade has seen a worrying resurgence of leprosy in India, which now accounts for more than half of the 200,000 new cases reported worldwide every year.

A Spanish hospital said Monday it has successfully carried out the world's most complex face transplant, reconstructing the lower face, neck, mouth, tongue and back of the throat of a man terribly disfigured by disease.

A team of 45 physicians, nurses, anaesthesiologists and other health professionals carried out the 27-hour operation in early February at Barcelona's Vall d'Hebron University Hospital, the hospital said in a statement.

In a move that could heighten the hurdles faced by states attempting to execute prisoners, a leading association for U.S. pharmacists has officially discouraged its members from providing drugs for use in lethal injections.

The policy adopted by American Pharmacists Association delegates at their annual meeting Monday makes an ethical stand against providing such drugs, saying they run contrary to the role of pharmacists as health care providers.

Higher levels of pesticide residue in fruit and vegetables are associated with lower quality of semen, according to a study published on Tuesday.

Its authors said the research was only an early step in what should be a much wider investigation.

An American healthcare worker who contracted the dangerous Ebola virus while working in Sierra Leone has improved and is now listed in fair condition, hospital officials said Monday.

The man, whose identity has not been revealed, "has improved from serious to fair condition," said a statement from the National Institutes of Health Clinical Center.

Children of richer, better-educated parents have bigger brains and more cognitive skills than their less-fortunate peers, but social help and teaching can help to overcome the differences, a study published on Monday said.

The distinctions were most profound in regions of the brain supporting language and reading, executive functions like memory and decision-making, and spatial skills, experts in the United States reported in the journal Nature Neuroscience.

Nine Indonesian men have died after consuming alcohol mixed with mosquito repellent, police said Monday, the latest deaths in the country linked to tainted drinks. 

The men bought the drinks on the street in the city of Prabumulih on Sumatra island on Thursday and were admitted to local hospitals after falling ill, local police spokesman Djarod Padakova told Agence France Presse. 

Sierra Leoneans were once again allowed to leave their homes Sunday evening after the government announced the end of a three-day nationwide lockdown aimed at preventing a resurgence of the deadly Ebola virus.

During the curfew period -- which was ordered by President Ernest Bai Koroma and ran from 0600 GMT on Friday until 1800 GMT Sunday  -- some 26,000 volunteers went door-to-door to check for sick people and raise awareness about the disease.