US Thursday has put on high alert the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Thursday against Ebola outbreak, which has killed many hundred people in West Africa.

"I have activated the CDC emergency operation centre at level one for this outbreak. This is our highest level of response," CDC director Tom Frieden told a congressional hearing

"It doesn't mean that there's an increased risk to Americans, but it does mean that we are taking an extensive effort to do everything we can to stop the outbreaks," Xinhua quoted Frieden as saying.

Calling it "a crisis" and "unprecedented," he said at the current trend there will have been more cases in this outbreak than in all previous recognised outbreaks of Ebola put together" within another few weeks.

And the best way to protect everyone worldwide is to stop the outbreak at the source in today's interconnected world, Frieden said.

"That is the only way to get control," he said. "I am confident that if we do what works, we will stop this one. But it won't be quick and it won't be easy. It requires meticulous attention to detail, because if you leave behind even a single burning ember, it's like a forest fire. It flares back up."

A new study has demonstrated that adults who eat at both fast food and full-service restaurants have a increased chance of calories, sugar, saturated fat, and sodium intake.

Binh T. Nguyen of the American Cancer Society and Lisa M. Powell of the University of Illinois at Chicago said that the United States was one of the most obese nations in the world, with more than one in three adult men and women in defined as obese.

Nguyen further said that just as obesity rates rise, there had been a marked increase in total energy consumption consumed away from home, with about one in four calories coming from fast food or full service restaurants in 2007.

The researchers said that the larger adverse effect they measured on energy intake for some lower socio-economic and minority populations had policy implications.

The study found Individual characteristics moderated the impact of restaurant food consumption. Net energy intake was larger for black adults compared with their white and Hispanic counterparts and greater for middle-income v. high-income adults.

The study is published in Public Health Nutrition.

The World Bank said Monday it will provide as much as $200 million in emergency funding to help the three west African countries of Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone contain the worsening Ebola outbreak in the region.

World Bank president Jim Yong Kim said in a statement that the new financing commitment was in response to a call from two of the three African countries hardest-hit by Ebola and the World Health Organisation for immediate assistance to contain the outbreak, Xinhua reported.

"I am very worried that many more lives are at risk unless we can stop this Ebola epidemic in its tracks," Kim said. "I have been monitoring its deadly impact around the clock and am deeply saddened at how it has ravaged health workers, families and communities, disrupted normal life, and has led to a breakdown of already weak health systems in the three countries."

Kim urged the international community to act fast to contain and stop this Ebola outbreak, which has killed at least 887 this year.

Kim, whose announcement came on the first day of the US-Africa Summit in Washington, said the new financial pledge would pay for urgently needed medical supplies, salaries for medical staff, and other vital materials to stabilise the health system, while also helping communities cope with financial hardship caused by the epidemic.

The money will also help to build up the region's disease surveillance and laboratory networks to guard against future epidemic outbreaks, he added.

An initial assessment for Guinea projects a full percentage point fall in economic growth from 4.5 percent to 3.5 percent, the bank said.

Also at the summit, US health officials, including Secretary of Health and Human Services Sylvia Mathews Burwell and Centres for Disease Control and Prevention Director Tom Frieden, met with President of Guinea Alpha Conde, and senior officials from Liberia and Sierra Leone about the Ebola outbreak, the US State Department said in a statement.

"The group identified national and regional priorities and held intensive discussions on the types of assistance needed to mount an effective response," the State Department said. "Secretary Burwell and Director Frieden reiterated US engagement and support for efforts to control the outbreak and address the challenge."

Earlier, the US government said it will send 50 disease control experts this month to West Africa to aid in containing the outbreak.

Diabetics in low-income neighbourhoods are up to 10 times more likely to lose a limb than patients residing in affluent areas, says a study.

"When you have diabetes, where you live directly relates to whether you will lose a limb to the disease," said lead author Carl Stevens, a clinical professor of medicine from David Geffen School of Medicine at University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA).

To reach this conclusion, researchers used data from the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research's California Health Interview Survey.

It estimated the prevalence of diabetes among low-income populations by ZIP code.

The result was a detailed set of maps showing diabetic amputation rates by neighbourhood for patients 45 and older - the age range at greatest risk for amputation from disease complications.

"Neighbourhoods with high amputation rates clustered geographically into hot spots with a greater concentration of households falling below the federal poverty level," said co-author Dylan Roby, director of health economics at UCLA.

Amputation patients were most likely to be black or non-English speaking, male, and older than 65.

People with poorly managed diabetes often suffer from a compromised immune system.

As a result, a blister or other foot injury may rapidly progress to a serious, even life-threatening infection.

Earlier diagnosis and proper treatment could prevent many of these amputations, researchers noted.

The findings, published in the journal Health Affairs, will motivate health providers to reach out to patients at risk of late intervention and inspire policymakers to adopt legislation to reduce barriers to care, researchers concluded.

A new study has revealed that maintaining a healthy lifestyle can help people avoid stress-related ageing.

According to the study by UC San Francisco, it was found that stress ages the body on a cellular level; however healthy diet, getting enough sleep and exercising acts as a "buffer" against the negative impact on the body, the Daily Express reported.

Dr Eli Puterman, an assistant professor in the department of psychiatry, said that people who exercised, slept well and ate well had less telomere shortening than the ones who didn't maintain healthy lifestyles, even when they had similar levels of stress

He further said that this was the first study that supported the idea that stressful events could accelerate immune-cell ageing in adults, even in the short period of a year and it's very important that they promote healthy living, especially under circumstances of typical experiences of life stressors like death, caregiving and job loss.

Stress has been linked to many serious conditions from Alzheimer's to heart disease and cancer. The study concentrated on telomeres, the protective "caps" at the ends of chromosomes affecting how cells age.

The researchers found that women who engaged in lower levels of healthy behaviors, there was a significantly greater decline in telomere length in their immune cells for every major life stressor that occurred during the year.

Yet women who maintained active lifestyles, healthy diets, and good quality sleep appeared protected when exposed to stress - accumulated life stressors did not appear to lead to greater shortening.

The study was published in Molecular Psychiatry.