China submitted its application to the World Health Organization on Wednesday for verification and elimination of the transmission of the debilitating disease lymphatic filariasis.

If approved, China may soon be officially declared free of the disease, 15 years ahead of the global elimination target of 2020

Government policies in Burma that restrict public health and humanitarian aid have enabled some of the world's deadly diseases to spread unchecked. According to a report by Johns Hopkins, AIDS, drug-resistant tuberculosis, malaria and bird flu (H5N1) are spreading at alarming rates.

The findings show that the spread of these infectious diseases, if left unchecked, could pose a serious health threat to other Southeast Asian nations and the world. Health professionals believe international cooperation and policies are needed to restore humanitarian assistance to the Burmese people, but warn that new government legislation imposed by the military junta are making those efforts increasingly difficult

Health officials say Wednesday that an estimated 1.5 million children in the Asia-Pacific region have been orphaned from the disease.

Some 250 delegates are attending a three-day meeting in Hanoi, Vietnam to discuss ways of stemming the disease among youth, as well as helping children who are infected and orphaned by AIDS

The number of bird flu deaths worldwide is going up. The World Health Organization says the deaths of five people in Azerbaijan have pushed the overall number of human deaths to 103.

WHO officials say at least seven patients in Azerbaijan tested positive for the deadly H5N1 strain. Five of the cases were fatal. The source of infection is still being investigated, but officials suspect the patients, who were generally girls and young women, may have caught bird flu by plucking the feathers from dead swans at work

Plagued by high unemployment and a shaky economy, Germany is seeing one of its lowest birth rates in years, taking the country to almost the bottom of the world's birth rate ranking.

German political leaders have vowed to push through new policies to encourage Germans to have more children, to stop this trend from growing