Malaria kills 271 in Assam since outbreak in March

"So far we have received reports of 271 deaths. The exact death toll could be higher as we are still getting reports of malaria deaths from interior areas," said the minister, Himanta Biswa Sarma.

Sarma said the spread of malaria in Assam was rapid this year as an anti-malaria drive in the state was slow to get started, yielding what he called the "large number of deaths".

Heavily forested and cut by rivers, northeast India is a known "malaria zone" with the disease claiming an estimated 500 lives annually, according to health officials.

Malaria is caused by a small parasite spread through mosquito bites and can spread quickly during the annual summer monsoon rains in India.

At the weekend, the state also sounded a health alert after 15 people died of Japanese encephalitis and hundreds more came down with the disease over the past two weeks.

"We have alerted health officials across the state to take preventive measures to stop Japanese encephalitis from spreading to newer areas," Assam Health Director Dhruba Hojai said.

Last year, an outbreak of Japanese encephalitis claimed 1,402 lives in India's most populous state of Uttar Pradesh alone.

The disease is transmitted from pigs to humans via mosquitoes during the monsoon rains from June to September.

Last year, the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) said at least 70 million children in India were at risk of getting the disease but there were not enough vaccines to protect them.

UNICEF said 66 million children between the age of one and five in India would be immunised against Japanese encephalitis in the next five years.