31 villagers may have been infected with Chikungunya

Theresia Sufa, The Jakarta Post, Bogor

At least 31 residents of two neighborhoods units of Kayu Manis village, Cibadak subdistrict, Tanah Sareal regency, have been diagnosed with Chikungunya, a health agency official said on Thursday.

The head of the Bogor health agency team to eradicate Chikungunya, Nuraini, claimed the agency was conducting blood tests on samples taken from 10 residents. The results will be available within a week.

"Eighteen of the patients have already recovered," Nuraini, who is also head of Kayu Manis community health center, told The Jakarta Post.

One of the patients, Nanah, 39, said she had been suffering from the disease since early January.

"I couldn't walk. I had a high fever and red spots appeared on my body. I went to see the doctor, who prescribed various medicines, including antibiotics," she said.

Admitting that response to the outbreak had been belated, Nuraini said the health agency had opened a clinic on Tuesday in one of the neighborhood units, which provided information on the disease and free examinations and treatment.

The agency had also fumigated the area to prevent the disease from spreading.

"The patients said they had been ill since early in the month. If they had visited the community health center at that time, we might have taken action sooner," Nuraini remarked.

Similar to dengue fever, Chikungunya is characterized by an extremely high fever. It is caused by a self-limiting febrile virus that is transmitted through the bite of either the Aedes africanus or the Aedes albopictus mosquito, which breeds in both suburban and rural areas.

People who suffer from Chikungunya usually experience muscular aches, followed by extremely high fever and a rash. As the disease progresses, they will experience paralyzing pain throughout the body. There is as yet no cure for the disease.

Many cases of Chikungunya were also reported in early January in some regions of Central Java province and also in West Jakarta.

The disease was first detected in West Java and Yogyakarta in January last year. Later it spread as far as West Timor, South Sulawesi and West Kalimantan.

The central government had warned that further outbreaks of Chikungunya were possible anywhere in Indonesia as the spread of the disease could not be predicted or anticipated, unless the breeding grounds of its carriers were cleaned up.