Nigeria, India, Pakistan, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Ethiopia accounted for more than half the children who died of pneumonia last year.

The last case of polio type 3 was detected in northern Nigeria in 2012, and global health officials have since been conducting intense surveillance to ensure it has gone.

Two experimental drugs were developed using antibodies harvested from survivors of Ebola infection.

People with high genetic risk and an unhealthy lifestyle were almost three times more likely to develop dementia than those with low genetic risk who also lived healthily.

Each year, more than 310,000 women die from cervical cancer, the vast majority of them in poorer countries where HPV immunisation coverage is low or non-existent.

The current Ebola epidemic underscores the importance of trust in authority and accurate information in successfully controlling outbreaks of infectious diseases.

Due to lack of access, poor health systems and in some cases fear or scepticism about vaccines the global coverage of the first dose of the measles vaccine was reported at 85% in 2017.

The case is a proof of the concept that scientists will one day be able to end AIDS, doctors said, but does not mean a cure for HIV has been found.

The researchers managed to eliminate the population in less than 11 generations, suggesting that the technique could in the future be used to control the spread of malaria, a parasitic disease carried by Anopheles gambiae mosquitoes.