Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper said Friday his government would provide support worth hundreds of millions of dollars towards life-saving vaccines for children around the world.

Harper made the announcement at an event with Senegalese Prime Minister Mohammed Dionne at a clinic in Dakar to mark the introduction in Senegal of a vaccine for rotavirus -- a virus that causes diarrhea in children so severe it can be fatal.

British scientists announced trials on a 15-minute Ebola test in Guinea as French President Francois Hollande became the first Western leader to visit a country devastated by the epidemic.

The prototype is six times faster than current tests and aims to speed up diagnosis, the London-based global research charity Wellcome Trust and Britain's Department for International Development (DFID) said in a statement.

British-funded researchers are to conduct trials in Guinea on a 15-minute Ebola test, the Wellcome Trust and UK government said in a joint statement on Friday.

The prototype is six times faster than current tests and aims to speed up diagnosis, the London-based global research charity and the Department for International Development (DFID) said.

Eight people have died in the west African nation of Benin from an outbreak of Lassa fever, while 170 others have been placed under observation, officials said Thursday.

Fourteen suspected cases of the virus have been identified, with two confirmed and eight deaths in the small country bordering Nigeria, said a joint statement from the WHO, Benin's health ministry and UNICEF.

Italy suspended the use of a flu vaccine made by Swiss pharmaceuticals giant Novartis on Thursday amid fears it may have caused three deaths.

The Italian Pharmaceutical Agency (AIFA) banned the use of two batches of the Fluad vaccine after three people who had received it died and a fourth was taken seriously ill.

South African professor Janusz Paweska hesitates for a moment as he describes his work trip to the heart of the Ebola epidemic in Sierra Leone.

"Obviously we had to touch the tubes," he says. "I wonder if I should tell you but I opened them with my hands -- I opened 1,400 tubes of blood with my hands."

The World Health Organization said Thursday that the global death toll from the Ebola virus had increased to 5,689 out of a total of 15,935 cases of infection, mainly in western Africa.

The earlier WHO toll from last Friday gave a death toll of 5,459 and 15,351 cases.

Researchers say they're a step closer to developing an Ebola vaccine, with a Phase 1 trial showing promising results, but it will be months at the earliest before it can be used in the field.

The news comes amid the worst ever outbreak of the hemorrhagic fever, which has killed nearly 5,700 people, mostly in West Africa.

Malaysians have a passionate love affair with their lip-smacking cuisine -- rich curries, succulent fried chicken, buttery breads and creamy drinks -- but it is increasingly an unhealthy relationship.

Malaysia is Southeast Asia's fattest country, where a nationwide foodie culture is feeding mounting concern over what its health minister calls "an obesity epidemic."

E-cigarettes contain 10 times the level of cancer-causing agents as regular tobacco, Japanese scientists said Thursday, the latest blow to an invention once heralded as less harmful than smoking.

The electronic devices -- increasingly popular around the world, particularly among young people -- function by heating flavored liquid, which often contains nicotine, into a vapor that is inhaled, much like traditional cigarettes but without the smoke.