Officials in Pakistan and the United Nations are investigating causes of a new outbreak of HIV infections in a southern district where nearly 400 people have been diagnosed in less than two weeks. Officials confirmed Saturday that nearly 80% of those infected are children, with nearly half of them under age …

Nearly every country in the world has agreed upon a legally binding framework to reduce the pollution from plastic waste except for the United States, U.N. environmental officials say. An agreement on tracking thousands of types of plastic waste emerged Friday at the end of a two-week meeting of U.N.-backed …

Dementia is a rapidly growing public health problem around the world. Fifty million people suffer from dementia, and in the next 30 years, that number is expected to triple. Researchers are looking for ways to treat or prevent dementia, and a promising clinical trial is underway in the U.S. Dementia …

Dementia is a rapidly growing public health problem throughout the world. Fifty million people suffer from dementia, and in the next 30 years, that number is expected to triple. Researchers are looking for ways to treat or prevent dementia, and VOA’s Carol Pearson reports some of the work being done …

It’s 9 o’clock in the morning, time for 3-year-old Lucas’ weekly music therapy session. “Lucas is autistic,” his mother Katey Hernandez explained. “He has a lot of sensory processing sensitivities, which means he’s really sensitive to loud noises, bright lights and a lot of [activity] around his body, and he …

The United Nations released a new global report on the environment this week. It says the decline of nature is unprecedented, and species extinction is accelerating. The study warns that many factors are having a severe impact, including climate change, pollution, deforestation, and invasive plants and animals. In South Africa, …

The World Health Organization warned Friday that it may not be possible to contain Ebola to the two affected provinces in eastern Congo if violent attacks on health teams continue. The ominous statement comes amid escalating violence nine months after the outbreak began, crippling efforts to identify suspected cases in …

Nigerian authorities say the country is losing more than $1 billion annually to medical tourism as tens of thousands of Nigerians travel abroad in search of the best treatment. Nigeria’s Health Ministry says it is building several world-class health centers to address the issue, but not even the country’s president …

Britain’s young royals, brothers Prince William and Prince Harry and their wives Kate and Meghan, launched a new phone messaging service Friday to help people suffering a mental health crisis. The two princes have been widely praised for speaking out about their own struggles with mental health in the wake …

Billionaire entrepreneur Jeff Bezos unveiled on Thursday a mockup of a lunar lander being built by his Blue Origin rocket company and touted his moon goals in a strategy aimed at capitalizing on the Trump administration’s renewed push to establish a lunar outpost in just five years. The world’s richest …

The European Union’s 28 countries consume the Earth’s resources faster than they can be renewed and none of them has sustainable consumption policies, a report released Thursday said, as EU leaders met to discuss priorities for the next five years. “All EU countries are living beyond the means of our …

As the planet heats up, it’s not just extreme weather that’s causing trouble but also the unintended consequences of that heat, in the case of some European forests it’s creating fertile ground for spruce bark beetles. VOA’s Kevin Enochs reports. …

The United States will soon require pharmaceutical companies to disclose the price of their drugs during television commercials, a measure which President Donald Trump on Wednesday welcomed as “historic transparency.” It is part of a US government policy to fight the high price of prescription drugs, which often exceeds those …

VOA U.N. correspondent Margaret Besheer contributed to this report.  Officials in Mozambique are scrambling to contain a cholera outbreak in the north of the country after Cyclone Kenneth devastated the area last month. Kenneth, the second cyclone to hit the country in five weeks, destroyed health clinics and contaminated the …

About 20 million years before the massive Tyrannosaurus Rex roamed the earth, a distant cousin was hunting in the prehistoric jungle. But this T-Rex was very different from the famous version of the giant predator. VOA’s Kevin Enochs reports. …

More U.S. adults are dying from heart failure today than a decade ago, and the sharpest rise in mortality is happening among middle-aged and younger adults, a new study suggests. Researchers examined data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on deaths from heart failure between 1999 …

Scientists say you may go your entire life without seeing an endangered species, yet the globe’s biodiversity crisis threatens all of humanity in unseen ways. A massive United Nations report Monday said that nature is in trouble and that 1 million species are threatened with extinction if nothing is done …

The long awaited UN report on Biodiversity has been released – and as we reported last week, the extensive study shows how human activity is threatening the mass extinction of one million of the world’s plant, insect and animal species. However, the report also suggests we can fix the problem. …

Giving local communities the responsibility to manage forests — which are shrinking worldwide — could help ease poverty and deforestation, scientists said Monday in what they described as one of the largest studies of its kind. Researchers examined more than 18,000 community-led forest initiatives in Nepal, using satellite images and …

Young activists pressuring U.S. lawmakers to aggressively tackle climate change and reject fossil fuel company donations got their first major financial boost Monday from a foundation that wants to “amplify” the Green New Deal movement ahead of the 2020 presidential election. The Wallace Global Fund, a nonprofit that supports social …

Teenagers in the U.S. coastal state of North Carolina who were schooled in the basics of man-made climate change saw their parents grow more concerned about the issue, scientists said on Monday in the first study of its kind. The results suggested nationwide protests by young people urging action to …

The active ingredients of commonly-used sunscreens end up in the bloodstream at much higher levels than current U.S. guidelines from health regulators and warrant further safety studies, according to a small study conducted by U.S. Food and Drug Administration researchers and published on Monday. The over-the-counter products originally marketed to …

The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) says the outbreak of Ebola in the Democratic Republic of Congo is “worsening” and has killed more than 1,000 people. IFRC said Saturday that in the past week, 23 cases were reported in one day, a record number since …

Scientists are conducting a large-scale, underwater experiment in the North Sea, testing for carbon dioxide leaks in what they say is world first. VOA’s Kevin Enochs reports the researchers are testing a plan to pump some of the world’s excess carbon into depleted underwater wells. …

Guatemala’s subsistence farmers and indigenous people living in poor rural  communities are most affected by rising temperatures and unpredictable rainfall linked to climate change, a leading researcher said Friday. Poverty makes the Central American country highly vulnerable to the impact of global warming that damages harvests and causes food shortages, said Edwin Castellanos, lead author …