Shanghai is stepping up monitoring at local hospitals after a new strain of bird flu killed two people last month in China's commercial hub, state media said Monday.

The Chinese government said over the weekend that two men, one aged 87 and the other 27, had died after being infected with H7N9 avian influenza -- a sub-type that had not previously been transmitted to humans.

Some 240,000 children have missed U.N.-backed vaccinations against polio because of security concerns in Pakistan's tribal regions bordering Afghanistan, a top official with the World Health Organization said Friday.

Dr. Nima Saeed Abid, the acting WHO chief in Pakistan, said health workers have not been able to immunize children in the North and South Waziristan regions — Taliban strongholds — since July 2012.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration on Friday approved a first-of-its-kind diabetes drug from Johnson & Johnson that uses a new method to lower blood sugar — flushing it out in patients' urine.

The agency cleared J&J's Invokana tablets for adults with Type 2 diabetes. The once-a-day medication works by blocking the kidneys from reabsorbing sugar, which occurs at higher levels in patients with diabetes than in healthy patients. Regulators highlighted the drug as the first in a new class of medications that could help address the growing U.S. diabetes epidemic.

The latest affliction to hit weary residents of Aleppo is written on their faces. Some call it the "Aleppo button", a welt caused by leishmaniasis, an illness that is sweeping the Syrian city.

Transmitted by flies, the parasitic disease arrived along with the thousands of Syrians displaced from their homes by fighting.

Speaker Nabih Berri on Friday underwent a “successful surgery” at the American University of Beirut Medical Center in Hamra.

“Speaker Berri has been admitted to the American University of Beirut Medical Center and (ex-health minister) Dr. Mohammed Jawad Khalife is conducting an urgent surgery on him," al-Jadeed television reported.

A U.S. study out Friday sought to dispel the fears of about one third of American parents that giving a series of vaccines to children may be linked to autism.

Even though children are receiving more vaccines today than they did in the 1990s, there is no link between "too many vaccines too soon" and autism, said the study in the Journal of Pediatrics.

European scientists are criticizing a decision by Italy's government to allow a handful of children to be treated in public hospitals with an experimental stem cell therapy.

The adult stem cell treatment was halted in May by the Italian Pharmacological Agency. But the government last week overruled the regulator after parents went to court to demand that the therapy be continued. The health ministry, citing ethical and compassionate concerns, said the therapy shouldn't be interrupted since it hadn't shown any "grave collateral effects" in the children, some of whom are terminally ill.

A dirty dentist placed 7,000 patients at risk of contracting HIV and other infectious diseases after failing to properly sterilize equipment at his Oklahoma practice, health officials warned Thursday.

Officials do not yet know if any patients were infected but urged everyone who had ever been treated at the Tulsa oral surgery practice to be tested at a free clinic.

U.S. health officials launched a hard-hitting offensive Thursday aimed at slashing the numbers of smokers across the country following the success of a similar campaign last year.

The new campaign encourages smokers to kick the habit with a series of adverts spotlighting the wrenching personal stories of individuals battling smoking-related illnesses or diseases.

A Brazilian doctor charged with murdering seven hospital patients is now being investigated in connection with hundreds more similar cases of suspicious deaths.

A team led by health ministry investigator Mario Lobato is re-examining the 1,872 deaths that took place over the past seven years in the intensive care unit led by 56-year-old Virginia Soares de Souza.