There was good news in Asia Friday on World Malaria Day 2008 because Sri Lanka, once one of the nations in the region with the worst malaria rate, has nearly eradicated the disease.

Rabindra Abeyasinghe, acting director of the government's anti-malaria campaign, told U.N. humanitarian news agency IRIN, that the country would have had an easier time fighting the disease if it had been able to move about freely in the northern areas of the country that are controlled by Tamil Tiger separatists

An alternative means of stopping tuberculosis, leprosy and other bacterial illness may be forthcoming.

Researchers from Weill Cornell Medical College in New York City say exciting new molecular targets - so-called "virulence factors" that bacteria use to thrive once they are in the host - present a potent means of stopping TB, leprosy and other bacterial illness

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration approves Thalidomide, a bone marrow cancer drug that was banned in 1962 for causing thousands of birth defects.

The Associated Press reports the drug will be used to treat newly diagnosed multiple myeloma, a condition that affects cells in the bone marrow used to fight infection

The Thalidomide UK charity says a disabled Kenyan boy, whose parents fought to have him treated in the UK, has died.

Born without arms or legs, one-year-old Freddie Musena-Mtile died in his hometown of Malindi from a fungal infection

Celgene Corp.'s clinical trial of Thalmoid for multiple myeloma cancer is completed, the drug maker said on Monday.

The drug had already been approved by the Food and Drug Administration for treating leprosy. But the company needs final approval to market it as a drug that treats a type of cancer that affects white blood cells, reports The Associated Press