HEALTH officials will begin distributing around 200,000 anti-malaria tablets to provincial hospitals and health centres across the country, according to Doung Socheat, director of the National Centre for Parasitology, Entomology and Malaria Control.

"For the first five months of 2009, 60 people died and there were 16,197 cases of malaria infection across the country," he said Monday, adding that infection rates were highest in Preah Vihear, Oddar Meanchey, Pursat, Seam Reap and Ratanakkiri provinces.

"I don't think this is a serious problem for us because we have already distributed mosquito nets to all those places, and we will continue to distribute tablets to them, so we can manage this problem."

So far, the centre has distributed around 660,000 mosquito nets to all of the Kingdom's provinces, he said.