Up to 19 million people in Tanzania suffer from malaria each year with about 100,000 deaths of mostly children and pregnant women, according to a United Nations Development Program (UNDP) report.

The UNDP office in Dar es Salaam said in a statement, available on Friday, that the majority of the 100,000 people who die of malaria are young children and pregnant women.

Tanzania has a population of 34.4 million people, according to the country's 2002 population census.

Malaria has been a leading cause of outpatient hospital visits in Tanzania and drains 3.4 percent of the country's gross domestic product annually.

At least a third of all the outpatients at hospitals and clinics are malaria-related.

The UNDP report said that malaria interrupts daily life by keeping adults away from work and children away from schools.

To better fight malaria, the Tanzanian government has just lifted a 14-year-old ban on insecticide DDT that helped the country to kill malaria-spreading mosquitoes.

Malaria surged back in the wake of the introduction in 1992 of a total ban on the use of DDT in Tanzania, according to local available statistics.

Though DDT was effective against mosquitoes that spread malaria and against lice that carry typhus, the insecticide was blacklisted as one of 12 persistent organic pollutants under the 2001 Stockholm Convention.

Source: Xinhua