Maoist link to malaria
  OUR SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT, The telegraph

*New Delhi, Oct. 28: *India's malaria hotspots appear to overlap with Maoist
strongholds, public health experts said today, listing local development and
improved governance among actions that could help reduce illness and deaths
from the infection.

Malaria is rampant in parts of Andhra Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, and
Orissa where lack of development and poor administration has prevented the
emergence of reliable healthcare services, the experts said at a
consultation on public health.

We look at the map and we see malaria is now localised in about 70
districts  but most of them are trouble districts, said Jayaprakash
Muliyil, professor of community health at the Christian Medical College,
Vellore.

They are tribal areas, forest areas, places where the health systems arenâ
working, places where there is unrest, Muliyil told *The Telegraph*, on the
sidelines of the consultation organised by the Public Health Foundation of
India.

Infectious disease experts believe the health ministry as figures of 1.7
million malaria cases and 1,707 deaths during 2006 are gross
underestimates. Using independent estimates, they believe up to 10 million
people were infected and more than 15,000 died from malaria that year.
We âre not getting the true picture said Garima Pathak, assistant
professor at the Indian Institute of Public Health, New Delhi.
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