Dengue fever still prevalent in W. Java: Health official

Yuli Tri Suwarni, The Jakarta Post, Bandung

Although now largely absent from newspaper headlines, dengue fever is still widespread in West Java and continues to quietly kill people there, with 101 having succumbed to the illness by May 16 this year, a health official says.

West Java Health Office head Yudi Prayudha said the latest data shows that 5,515 people have suffered from dengue fever in 25 regions from January to May this year.

"During this transition season, where environmental sanitation is not all good, it's easy to trigger the increase of dengue fever cases in the province," Yudi said in Bandung.

Despite the high number of victims, cases of dengue fever are still half the number reported in the same period last year, when 177 people, out of 17,200 sufferers, died of the disease.

Yudi, however, cautioned against complacency, saying not all regencies and municipalities had reported their fever cases to the health office.

Out of the reported cases so far, most of them, or 895 cases, were found in Bandung city, followed by Bekasi city with 836 cases.

In the five-month period, the most reported cases happened in February, with 2,018 cases and 27 dead. In January, 41 people died of dengue fever out of a reported 1,043 sufferers.

The head of the office's environmental sanitation section, Udeng Daman, said people's awareness about maintaining a clean environment was still low.

Along with dengue fever and polio, the office was also working hard to reduce the number of people living with leprosy who mostly lived in the northern coastal area of the province, Udeng said.

Last year, the province recorded 1,658 cases of leprosy, with most of them found in Bekasi, Cirebon, Indramayu, Majalengka and Subang.

Early this year, the office discovered 24 cases of leprosy in Simpenan, Sukabumi, as well as four more cases in Bandung city and 28 cases in Sindangkerta, Bandung regency.

"However, West Java has not been declared a leprosy endemic area because the prevalence is only about six people infected in every 100,000, while it is only considered endemic when the prevalence is one person in every 10,000 residents," he said.