A cholera epidemic has left 16 people dead and have infected 176 others in Adamawa and Kano states, a medical official said on Wednesday.

While 12 have been confirmed dead in Adamawa, four others have also died, following a fresh cholera outbreak at Wulari settlement in the Kumbotso Local Government Area of Kano State.

“So far, 12 people have died from the disease and there are many more cases,” said the Medical Director of the General Hospital, Mubi, Ezra Sakawa, told Reuters.

According to the head of medical charity Doctors Without Borders (MSF) mission in the city, two out of three Ebola patients who escaped quarantine in the Democratic Republic of the Congo's Mbandaka have died.

The third patient was found alive and is currently under observation by MSF and the World Health Organization (WHO), the MSF's Henri Gray said on Wednesday.

Meanwhile, the WHO said on Wednesday it was speeding up efforts with nine countries neighbouring the Democratic Republic of Congo(DRC) to attempt to prevent the spread of the current Ebola outbreak beyond its borders. The UN agency said teams are being deployed to assess how prepared the countries are.

The secrets of how malaria became a human-killer have been revealed by a genetic study.

The work, led by researchers from Wellcome Sanger Institute in Cambridge, compared seven types of malaria - tracing the parasite's family tree.

This revealed that, about 50,000 years ago, the parasites diverged, with one "branch" evolving into the most deadly human-infecting species.

A new study published in The BMJ has found that antidepressant use may be associated with weight gain over time. “Patients who were normal weight were more likely to transition to overweight, and overweight patients were more likely to transition to obesity if they were treated with antidepressants,” said study co-author Rafael Gafoor, a primary care and public health researcher at King’s College London, in an email to TIME.

A new study released on Sunday by the Journal of Physiology concluded that the most excellent way to keep yourself healthy and youthful is by exercising at least four to five days a week for at least 30 minutes.

The study, called The Effect of Lifelong Exercise Frequency on Arterial Stiffness, examined 102 people over the age of 60 who identified themselves as being physically active throughout their lives.

Over 800 people have been poisoned after eating toxic wild mushrooms in around 10 provinces in the west of Iran.

At least 11 people have died from the effects of the deadly fungi and hundreds more have been hospitalised.

There is no effective treatment for such poisoning, Iran's Tasnim News Agency reports.