$180m needed to curb 'chikungunya'

$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.