The beautiful Seven Sisters have a deadly commonality. All the 7 north-eastern states have been found to be endemic to malaria. This has been reported last fortnight by the expert committee on malaria which was constituted after the epidemic in Rajasthan last year.

The committee, headed by the former director of the National Malaria Eradication Programme, S Pattanayak, has made a fresh identification of the country's malaria prone regions. Other endemic regions are the tribal belts in 87 districts in 7 states of peninsular India, where more than 6.9 million people are perennially at risk.

About 141 million people in Punjab, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh and Rajasthan are also at risk. Among other factors, the report says that many developmental projects are responsible for this wide reach of malaria. "Many projects linked to urban and industrial growth, as well as irrigation extension schemes have become intense malariogenic sites due to the influx of a large number of susceptible population as well as different strains of parasites," says Pattanayak.

The report has recommended the setting up of 2.1 lakh fever treatment and drug distribution depots to strengthen the anti-malaria programme, stressed the importance of microscopic diagnosis, and called for the provision of 22,000 microscopes throughout the endemic regions in order to facilitate early detection.