Death toll from malaria rises to 20 in Riau village

Death toll from malaria rises to 20 in Riau village

Haidir Anwar Tanjung
The Jakarta Post
Pekanbaru, Riau

Eight more people have died from malaria over the past seven
days in a village in the Riau regency of Indragiri Hilir,
bringing the death toll to 20 in the three weeks since the
epidemic first broke out.

All eight fatalities were from Belaras village in the remote
Mandah district, some 350 kilometers south of the Riau provincial
capital of Pekanbaru.

"The village has been put on full alert in order to combat the
disease," said Indragiri Hilir Regent Rusli Zainal on Monday.

He said about 70 villagers were being treated for malaria in
two clinics in Belares.

Rusli added that Indragiri Hilir needed more health-care
workers from Pekanbaru.

The regency, which has a population of about 420,000, suffers
from a shortage of health-care workers and medical equipment to
cope with the malaria outbreak, he said.

He said blood samples from infected people had been sent to
laboratories in Pekanbaru to determine the strain of the
mosquito-borne disease.

So far, health officials believe the village was hit by the
Tropica Falsivarum type, he said.

Health officials in the regency have traced the outbreak of
the malaria epidemic back to the Telaga Besar subdistrict. The
disease spread to the neighboring subdistricts of Batang Sari and
Pancur.

However, poor roads have hampered aid efforts from reaching
the three subdistricts.

An initial report that the village was affected by the Severe
Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) was also a factor in the late
arrival of aid to the village.

"People had reported that there was a SARS case in their
village and nobody came to help that person out of fear they
would come into contact with the virus," the head of the local
health agency, Masykur Abdullah, said last week.

A health official, wearing a face mask, came later to the
village. "It was that official who diagnosed the case as
malaria," he said, adding that this was in mid-April.

By that time, two villagers had died from the disease.

The deputy of the Riau provincial health office, Ekmal Rusdi,
said his team was closely monitoring developments in Indragiri
Hilir.

"We are monitoring the locations that have been affected by
malaria and we are trying to contain it to those areas," Ekmal
said.

Transmitted by the anopheline mosquito, malaria is a constant
threat to people living in many regions throughout Indonesia.

The threat of contracting malaria is highest in the eastern
part of the country. Some 100 million people out of Indonesia's
population of 210 million are at risk of contracting malaria and
the country reports some 1.5 million cases every year, according
to estimates from the World Health Organization (WHO).

The last major outbreak occurred in the East Java town of
Banyumas, in which 107 people died from malaria between August
2001 and January 2002.

The WHO estimates that the worldwide death toll stands at
between 1 million and 1.5 million people.