Hong Kong said Thursday it will test babies who have consumed two Japanese-made infant formulas found to have low levels of iodine, after the products were ordered off the city's shelves.

The move came after officials found the Wakodo and Morinaga formula brands lacked sufficient iodine, and warned they could have "potential adverse health effects" on babies' thyroid glands and brains.

Death knows the small town of Prieska all too well.

A poisonous legacy of South Africa's years as a global blue asbestos hub, the Grim Reaper has snaked through here for decades, wiping out families and striking down neighbors with deadly precision.

A big U.S. government study shows that in the past decade, the proportion of children who have high cholesterol has fallen.

The results are surprising, given that the childhood obesity rate didn't budge.

Fewer than half of U.S. adults get enough physical activity for their health, said a U.S. government study released Tuesday.

In a country where two thirds of the population is overweight or obese, just 48 percent get enough exercise, said the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Eight million chickens have so far been slaughtered in Mexico and 66 million more were vaccinated in a bid to contain a bird flu outbreak in the west of the country, authorities said Tuesday.

The agriculture ministry said in a statement that during the vaccination process in the Los Altos region of Jalisco state, diseased chickens were identified, leading to the destruction of the flu-carrying fowl.

Syrians are in urgent need of life-saving medicines following an escalation in fighting, which also threatens further food shortages, U.N. agencies warned on Tuesday.

"The recent escalation of clashes has resulted in substantial damage to the pharmaceutical plants located in rural Aleppo, Homs and rural Damascus," said World Health Organization (WHO) spokesman Tarik Jasarevic.

Thailand will offer 90-day visas on arrival to citizens of six Middle Eastern countries for private health treatment in a bid to boost its status as a medical tourism hub, officials said Tuesday.

The visas will be available to nationals of Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates provided they can show proof of their medical appointment in Thailand.

Pfizer and Johnson & Johnson said Monday they had given up tests of a new therapy to treat Alzheimer's disease, saying the treatment did not measure up to expectations.

The final, phase 3 trial of the intravenous bapineuzumab therapy did not meet targets for effectiveness in aiding cognitive and functional performance of Alzheimer's victims, according to the two drug giants.

Cocaine use in several Swiss cities is among the highest in Europe, researchers said on Monday.

"The amounts of cocaine ... were in the same range as those European cities with the highest consumption," said Christoph Ort, from the Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Science and Technology (Eawag).

Every day dozens of people flock to Salman al-Khafaji's clinic in central Baghdad, hoping the octogenarian can treat their ailments where the Iraqi capital's hospitals and doctors have failed.

Khafaji is one of a dwindling number of mostly men who have filled gaps in Iraq's health system which during the 1990s was short on medicine as a result of the embargo imposed on the country for Saddam Hussein's invasion of Kuwait.