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At least half of the world’s population cannot obtain essential health services, according to a new report by the World Health Organisation and World Bank. And each year, large numbers of households are being pushed into poverty because they must pay for health care out of their own pockets, the report said. Currently, 800 million people spend at least 10 percent of their household budgets on health expenses for themselves, a sick child or another family member.

A research by psychologists have shown that the rated strength of a male body accounts for a full 70 per cent of the variance in attractiveness. A strong upper body, wide shoulders, being physically fit make men attractive to women.

The researchers tested how important physical strength is to men's bodily attractiveness by showing women pictures of men's bodies and asking them how attractive they were.

The results, which was published in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B, showed that it was possible to almost perfectly predict how attractive a man's body is from three factors: how physically strong he looks, how tall he is, and how lean he is.

The officer in-charge of UNICEF Field Office, Kaduna, Dr Idris Baba on Tuesday said the organisation has scaled up support to tackle high HIV prevalence among adolescents in seven local government areas of Kaduna State.

Baba, who made the disclosure in Zaria at a forum with media executives in the state, said: “HIV in adolescents remains a big concern; the seven LGAs have higher prevalence of HIV among adolescents in the state.”

Cigarettes should be tinted green and each one emblazoned with “smoking kills” according a new study by Cancer Research UK published in Nicotine and Tobacco Research. The move would discourage young people from taking up the habit, said Cancer Research UK. More than one in five young Scots are hooked on nicotine – the highest proportion in the UK.

Drug and disease tests, the world over, currently rely on blood or urine samples but researchers have now developed a breathalyser that can identify drugs from exhaled breath. Published in the Journal of Breath Research, the study identified a method for drug testing by analysing various compounds in the breath.

A new study has revealed that newer versions of the birth control pill carry a similar increased risk of breast cancer as earlier ones that were abandoned in the 1990s.

Women taking modern formulations of the pill have a 20 percent increased risk of breast cancer compared with those who've never been on hormonal contraception, the study of almost 2 million Danish women found.

"The risk increases with increasing duration of use and persists for more than five years, if used for longer than five years," said study author Lina Morch, a senior epidemiologist with the University of Copenhagen in Denmark.