Diane Cole

Last week in the northern Afghan province of Balkh, an impoverished mother chose the only option she felt was left to her, after her drug-addicted husband abandoned her. She had to care by herself for five young children and an elderly father. So she sold her one-month old infant for ...

Control, eliminate, eradicate: A thesaurus might tell you the words are similar, the last two even interchangeable. But as the American Museum of Natural History's newly opened exhibition Countdown to Zero: Defeating Disease makes clear, when it comes to fighting disease the difference can be as stark as life ...

This past fall, President Jimmy Carter, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002, celebrated his 90th birthday. Looking ahead, he's also hoping to celebrate the global eradication of Guinea worm disease (also known as dracunculiasis).

It's a goal toward which the nonprofit Carter Center, whose motto is "wage ...

Teach someone to fish, the saying goes, and they'll eat for a lifetime. Teach a nurse to become more involved in helping people heal, and patients could enjoy a longer life. That's the philosophy behind training nurses to mentor other nurses, says Sheila Davis, chief nursing officer and chief of ...

Some 22,000 years ago, they were the largest group of humans on earth: the Khoisan, a tribe of hunter-gatherers in southern Africa.

Today, only about 100,000 Khoisan, who are also known as Bushmen, remain. Stephan C. Schuster, professor at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, has published new research about ...

In the West Point slum of Monrovia, Liberia, at a holding center for those suspected of but not yet confirmed as having Ebola, photojournalist John Moore witnessed a man stagger, fall and hit his head on the floor. The man's wife was with him, but because of the highly ...

In the parts of the world that we cover in our blog, many people live in villages.

Villages have their problems, to be sure. There may not be a doctor or clinic nearby. Girls may not be able to go to school. Clean water might be a long walk away.

No one knows what the death toll in the Ebola epidemic will be. As of Tuesday, nearly 2,500 people have died and nearly 5,000 have caught the virus, the World Health Organization says.

So how does this epidemic compare with the toll taken by other contagious diseases?

Comparing fatality ...

When it comes to protecting themselves from HIV, women need more options.

About 84 percent of all women diagnosed with HIV contract the virus through heterosexual sex. And right now, the female condom is the only contraception available that stops HIV — and is controlled by the woman. ...