All four districts of Tripura have become malaria drug resistant while the State Government has asked the Centre to provide help in combating vulnerability to the deadly disease. Replying to a calling attention in the State Assembly here today, State Health and Family Welfare Minister Tapan Chakraborty revealed that three districts of the state, except West Tripura, were found more vulnerable to malaria. "The death toll in malaria has increased from 20 in 2005 to 44 in 2007 despite effective measures taken by the State Government prompting the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare to change the treatment pattern'', Chakraborty said adding that a total of 18,008 cases were diagnosed with the deadly disease in 2005 while the number of affected people has increased to 23,375 in 2007. He, however, stated that the Ministry instructed the state government to use second-generation medicine instead of traditional medicines to prevent malaria deaths and the departments have already stored adequate medicines in each sub-division to ensure speedy and effective treatment. Moreover the State Government has also taken all possible measures like spraying of DDT, use of instant diagnostic kits in high malaria prone areas. Besides, the Central government has sanctioned 1,15,000 medicated nets to prevent people from mosquito biting and more such nets are likely to be brought in the State, Chakraborty pointed out. Apart from that the state government has received six fogging machines to prevent mosquito-biting and these would be used in the Agartala Municipal Council (AMC) area. Later, fogging machines would be used in sub-divisional towns too, he assured.