Though malaria is yet to strike all parts of Assam in epidemic form, 27 deaths due to the disease have been reported from different parts of the State till date with the hill district of Karbi Anglong being the worst affected with 18 deaths. Health Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma said that apart from some parts of Karbi Anglong, there has been no rush of malaria patients in any of the hospitals and health centres of the State. He said that last year, as many as 141 persons died due to the disease and 60 deaths were reported by the end of May. This year, the situation is much better compared to the last couple of years, he added. Giving an account of the steps initiated by the Government to prevent outbreak of the disease in epidemic form, Sarma said that so far around three lakh medicated mosquito nets have been distributed among the poor people in the malaria-prone areas of the State and the process is on to distribute around the same number of nets soon. He revealed that the Government of India provided 1.50 lakh mosquito nets and the rest were procured by the State Government. He said that spraying of DDT in the malaria-prone areas started early and the vacant posts of the surveillance workers were filled up. The Minister said that now the Government has around 26,000 accredited social health assistants under the National Rural Health Mission (NRHM) and they are also providing very good service to the Health department in detecting cases of malaria so that the patients receive treatment on time. The health assistants are also engaged in distributing anti-malaria tablets to the people. The main job of the health assistants is to encourage women to go for institutional delivery and the workers receive Rs 600 against each institutional delivery under the NRHM. The State Government, on its own, is also planning to provide incentives to the health assistants who also help the Health Department in dealing with other diseases and in creating awareness programmes. Sarma said that there is no shortage of doctors anywhere in the State to treat malaria patients and adequate medicines and rapid diagnostic kits have been provided to all the hospitals for early diagnosis. Though awareness programmes have been launched, there have been instances when affected people came for treatment very late and in some cases, people also did not allow spraying of DDT. When asked about the reasons for large number of deaths in Karbi Anglong, Sarma said that the Government provided all possible help to the Autonomous Council but the terrain and lack of awareness among the people must have caused problems for the council in checking the outbreak of the disease.