$180m needed to curb 'chikungunya'

The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

Health Minister Achmad Sujudi says that his ministry needs Rp 1.6 trillion (about US$180 million) to exterminate Aedes albopictus mosquitoes, the carriers of chikungunya disease.

Briefing the press after installing nine new officials at the Ministry of Health on Wednesday, Sujudi said that the budget would be used to pay 70,000 communicable disease officials in 70,000 villages across the country.

Since January, chikungunya has spread in eight provinces, infecting thousands of people.

"It's a one-year budget and we will use it to pay the officials whose task, among others, is to encourage communities in villages to actively participate in exterminating the mosquitoes," he said.

Achmad said that he expected local administrations would have enough funds to pay one official for every village.

In a phone interview with The Jakarta Post, Director General of Communicable Diseases Umar Fahmi Achmadi said that to his knowledge, the budget would be used for eradicating not only chikungunya but also other communicable diseases, such as leprosy, malaria, tuberculosis and dengue fever.

"We have medicine for the diseases but we cannot give them to patients who cannot reach doctors due to distance from health facilities. So, we plan to recruit some more trained officials to control communicable diseases in villages," he said.

The steps for preventing the spread of chikungunya mosquitoes, he said, were similar to those taken for eradicating dengue fever mosquitoes that breed in clean water. They were cleaning the surrounding environment from still pools of water, tightly covering water tanks, and putting Abate powder into water tanks.