Administration accused of slow response to dengue

JAKARTA (JP): The city administration has been criticized for its slow response in fighting dengue hemorrhagic fever, which so far has killed five people across the capital this year.

Speaking at a hearing with the City Health Agency, city councillor Lambertus Gaina Dara of the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI Perjuangan) said that many people did not recognize the early symptoms of the disease.

"The city administration must step up its prevention campaign before the disease claims more lives," Lambertus said.

"Most victims, which are still in the first and second stages of the disease, are outpatients. Some of them sought medical treatment at the hospital, but they were neglected."

He was responding to recent reports that several people with dengue fever were denied admittance to hospitals, while they had been outpatients.

Many cases of dengue fever have occurred in subdistricts where many used tires had been left in the open. The mosquitoes breed in the rainwater that collects in the tires. Among the subdistricts are Kebon Jeruk and Kembangan in West Jakarta, and Cawang and Kebon Pala in East Jakarta.

The agency recorded 953 dengue fever cases in the capital from the beginning of this year to Feb. 7. East Jakarta had the most with 339 cases, South Jakarta 194, West Jakarta 180, North 136 and Central Jakarta 98 cases.

Meanwhile, the Tangerang municipal health office has stepped up prevention measures against an outbreak of dengue fever, which has been contracted by 12 people over the past month.

The office's head of environmental and contagious diseases unit, Liza Puspadewi, said on Thursday a campaign to raise people's awareness of dengue fever had been launched across the mayoralty.

She said the office had also intensified the use of abate powder to kill eggs of aedes aegypty mosquitoes, the carrier of the virus, which are usually laid on the surface of still water. The campaign has been conducted in 18 dengue-prone subdistricts.

Residents have also been advised to spray or burn mosquito repellent in the daytime, the most common time for aedes aegypty mosquitoes to bite humans.

The disease affected 128 people across the mayoralty last year, two of whom died.

With the disease expected to escalate between March and May, the health office has urged people to eradicate the mosquitoes this month. (41/07)