Govt, hospitals forge coop to control dengue

Dewi Santoso, Jakarta

The Ministry of Health has recently signed an agreement with the Regional Hospitals Association (Arsada) to forge cooperation in the handling of dengue fever -- outbreaks of which have affected the country almost every year over the last 36 years.

With the agreement, all state-run hospitals in the regions are obliged to provide medical facilities for dengue fever patients and to actively participate in the nationwide anti-dengue campaign.

Minister of Health Achmad Sujudi said here on Tuesday that the agreement was part of the measures that the government was taking to control annual dengue fever outbreaks.

"It (the agreement) is concrete evidence that the government is making efforts to prevent annual outbreaks from taking place in the future," Sujudi said during a one-day seminar on the community's role in controlling the disease.

In February, the government placed Nanggroe Aceh Darussalam, Jakarta, West Java, Central Java, Yogyakarta, East Java, Banten, Bali, West Nusa Tenggara, East Nusa Tenggara, South Kalimantan and South Sulawesi on an emergency footing due to the large number of people infected with and dying from the disease.

The health ministry recorded 59,321 cases and 669 deaths in the provinces during this year's outbreak. The government disbursed Rp 500 million (US$53,191) to each province to help eradicate the virus and designated 63 hospitals to provide free treatment to dengue fever patients.

Sujudi said that dengue fever was in reality a disease that could not be eradicated as it was categorized as an endemic disease that had existed in the country for 36 years.

"We know that dengue fever will always emerge during the period when the seasons are changing. All we can do is to control the disease and reduce its case fatality rate (CFR), or otherwise it will reemerge every year," he said.

According to Ministry of Health data, the dengue fever CFR decreased to 1.5 percent in 2003 from 2.0 percent in 1999 and 41.38 percent in 1968.

Sujudi stressed the importance of taking care of the environment people were living in as this was the most important factor in controlling the disease.

The government has long called for public participation in controlling dengue fever through a change in household habits, including draining open tanks, covering bathing tanks and receptacles containing still water, and burying used cans -- locally called the 3M measures -- to eliminate the breeding places of the Aedes aegypti mosquito, which carries the virus.