Twenty-seven people have fallen victim in one day to an unknown strain of malaria in westernmost Tanzania while 410 others are still hospitalized for the disease, according to reports on Saturday.

Children and pregnant women have accounted for more than half of these in-patients.

The Tanzanian health minister has had to withdraw from the ongoing parliamentary session to lead a group of doctors and researchers to rush to the rescue in Bukoba.

The outbreak of this unknown strain of malaria was reported in two districts of the Kagera region in westernmost Tanzania bordering Lake Victoria.

A local report delivered to the country's health minister said that the number of cases of malaria infection among children under the age of five years rose from 650 recorded in January this year to 832 in March. The figure further rose to 1,448 cases in June.

The months of May and June are usually the rampant period of malaria infection in the east African country.

The report quoted a local hospital dossier as counting malaria- caused children deaths to be 179 in the first six months of this year.

Malaria is one of the three killer diseases in Tanzania, where HIV/AIDS and tuberculosis are also killing lots of people each year.

Malaria claims on average the lives of some 100,000 people in Tanzania every year and of the fatality total 70,000 are children under the age of five years.

Source: Xinhua