Health Highlights: March 18, 2016

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Here are some of the latest health and medical news developments, compiled by the editors of HealthDay:

Two New Ebola Cases Confirmed in Guinea: WHO

Two new cases of Ebola have been confirmed in Guinea, nearly three months after the country was declared Ebola-free by the World Health Organization.

The cases were found in a village in the southern area of the West African nation and WHO said it sent a team of experts to the site, USA Today reported.

Guinea officials alerted the WHO about the unexplained deaths of three people whose family members showed Ebola symptoms. A woman and her 5-year-old son tested positive for the deadly virus and were taken to a treatment center.

The two new cases in Guinea were confirmed around the same time as the WHO announced the end of an Ebola flare-up in neighboring Sierra Leone, USA Today reported.

The Ebola outbreak that began in Dec. 2013 has claimed more than 11,300 lives, most of them in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone.

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J&J Told to Pay $502 Million in Artificial Hip Lawsuit Decision

Johnson & Johnson must pay $502 million to five patients for problems they experienced with the company’s Pinnacle artificial hips, a federal-court jury in Dallas said Thursday.

The patients accused J&J of hiding flaws in the devices that caused them to prematurely fail, Bloomberg News reported.

J&J was ordered to pay $142 million in actual damages and $360 million in punitive damages to the patients, whose hips broke down and had to be surgically removed.

This was the second trial of about 8,000 lawsuits filed over the Pinnacle hips. J&J won the first case heard by a jury in 2014, Bloomberg reported.

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