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January 6, 2013 At a new school for midwives, students learn old arts, like massaging bellies, while also studying gynecology, obstetrics and nursing. Officials hope a new generation of professional midwives will help reduce the pressures on Mexican hospitals overwhelmed by births that, in the past, would have taken place at home.

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January 4, 2013 South Korea now appears to be the fastest-aging country in the world. The government has launched a series of creative programs, including a network of community centers for dementia patients and training for young people that simulates the physical and mental effects of old age.

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January 4, 2013 Developed by British researchers, Larry the robot has helped scientists see that a little vomit can go a long way. He vomits on command. And his barf can be tagged with fluorescent dye that makes it easy for scientists to track.

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January 2, 2013 Chinese officials say two people intentionally spiked a restaurant's eggplant stir-fries with a toxic dose of a blood pressure drug. The poisoning sent 80 diners to the hospital, where doctors figured out the cause. They all eventually recovered.

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January 2, 2013 A scientist in Thailand raises mosquito colonies so she can study a new malaria drug. The insects are quite spoiled — they'll eat only live human blood. So she feeds them "breakfast" each day from her right arm.

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December 31, 2012 When scientists figured out how to make the deadly H5N1 virus more contagious, a debate ignited about whether to publish the research and do more experiments. Over the past year, scientists published the contentious work, but they still can't agree on the field's future.

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December 29, 2012 Researchers argue that ecology has a pretty big say in whether disease rates increase or die down. They used a new field that blends economics and ecology called "macroecology" to figure out how biodiversity loss affected disease burden.

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December 19, 2012 With publicity campaigns, radio jingles and pinups, the government helped eliminate the parasitic disease. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is still fighting malaria at home and abroad.

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December 19, 2012 Scientists recently sparked controversy when they made dangerous new forms of bird flu. The National Institutes of Health is about to put in place a new system for reviewing this kind of work in the future.

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December 19, 2012 Gunmen staged new attacks Wednesday on health workers carrying out a nationwide polio vaccination program. On Tuesday, six workers were killed as they went house to house.

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December 19, 2012 Myanmar and other parts of Southeast Asia are awash with shoddy and phony malaria drugs. Some fakes are almost indistinguishable from authentic drugs. The counterfeits can be deadly for patients, but they also threaten to undermine major weapons against the disease.

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December 18, 2012 Global deaths from malaria have dropped sharply in the past decade, thanks in part to powerful drugs called artemisinins. But on the border between Thailand and Myanmar, doctors are starting to see cracks in artemisinin's armor. The medicine is working more slowly, and sometimes not at all.

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December 18, 2012 Starting in January, the French government will provide contraceptives for girls ages 15 to 18 — without charge and without parental notification. The measure, which passed parliament without debate, aims to reduce teen pregnancies by increasing access to birth control and education.

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December 18, 2012 In South Africa, drug users are crushing HIV medications and mixing them with marijuana, heroin and other illicit drugs. Public health workers worry that people who smoke so-called whoonga are helping to fuel the rise of drug-resistant HIV.

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