Diarrhea claims 17 lives in East Nusa Tenggara

The Jakarta Post, East Flores/Semarang

An outbreak of diarrhea in East Nusa Tenggara has claimed more lives, with 15 people reportedly having died in East Flores regency as of Tuesday, and two more in Belu regency. Of the 15 East Flores victims, six were children and nine were adults.

The head of the welfare section at the province's social affairs office, Fransiska Palan Bolen, said on Tuesday that the diarrhea outbreak in East Flores had been declared an emergency.

Besides the dead, diarrhea has also affected 959 other people, 22 of whom are in critical condition and are still being treated in a number of hospitals and community health centers.

In Belu, the diarrhea outbreak has started to worsen over the last three days, and has claimed two lives so far, with many more people receiving treatment.

The East Nusa Tenggara governor, Piet A. Tallo, has instructed disease prevention coordinating teams to reactivate monitoring posts, take action to prevent the further spread of the disease, and to institute all necessary preventative measures.

"The government has also sent medicines to help treat the victims," Fransiska said.

According to the head of the province's disease prevention office, Fransiskus A. Pello, there are eight regencies and cities -- Kupang (both regency and municipality), Belu, Timor Tengah Selatan, Rote Ndao, Sikka, East Flores, and West Manggarai -- prone to diarrhea outbreaks.

"Most diarrhea cases here occur because of a lack of clean water. Many people still consume untreated water taken from contaminated sources," Fransiskus Pello said.

Diarrhea outbreaks in Sikka and West Manggarai regencies claimed at least 10 lives in November last year.

Apart from diarrhea, dengue fever has also become a major cause for concern in East Nusa Tenggara province.

In Kupang municipality and Sikka regency, three people have died and 168 have come down with dengue fever over the last four weeks. Most of those affected have been children.

The provincial administration has distributed around 625 kilograms of abate powder to the local health office in Kupang municipality to be distributed to residents for free. In a couple of days, the administration will also carry out fumigation to prevent the further spread of the disease.

"The three residents who died of dengue fever in Kupang lived on the city's outskirts," Fransiskus said on Tuesday, adding that other regencies prone to dengue fever included Kupang, Ende, Belu and East Sumba.

In West Java, seven people have reportedly died of dengue fever over a period of three weeks.

Head of the environmental health unit at the West Java health office, Fatimah Resmiati, said on Tuesday that the seven victims were from Subang, Bogor and Bandung.

She predicted that the incidence of the disease this year would not be as bad as last year. In November 2004, the province recorded 244 cases of dengue fever, as against 181 in December and 113 in January of this year.

"The new cases of dengue fever have mostly occurred in Subang regency, where 35 people have taken ill, while 20 have fallen sick in Bogor and 18 in Bekasi," Fatimah said, adding that the real number of people affected could be higher since many hospitals had yet to submit reports to her office.

In Semarang, the head of the city's disease prevention office, Widoyono, blamed slow reporting by hospitals for the spread of dengue fever in the city.

He said that hospitals should report the number of cases of contagious diseases treated every Monday.

"In reality, only two of the 14 public hospitals routinely send in reports ... there's even those who send in their reports only after eight weeks," Widoyono said.

Late reporting made it hard to quickly tackle the spread of dengue fever, he added. "If we have the reports, we'll immediately know the names of those who are ill as well as the places where they live so that we can take immediate action," he said.

In the city of Semarang as a whole, the number of reported dengue fever cases stood at 11 in October of last year, but this figure had risen to 67 by December. As of mid-January, the health office had only been notified of five cases.