Draggable and sprites

Draggable and sprites

I've got a map that has countries which 'light up' on hover by using sprites. I'm dragging draggable items to the country each belongs to and droping them there. This all works, but my sprites don't work while dragging a draggable item over them. I'm not sure if this is because the draggable item is blocking the event, or because the mouse is in a 'down' state while dragging and item. I noticed that if I click the mouse and drag it across the sprites area without dragging an item, none of the sprites work them. 

So, I need a way to make the draggable item trigger my sprites. Any ideas?