Health agency has yet to get budget to fight dengue fever

JAKARTA (JP): The City Health Agency has yet to receive the Rp 3.5 billion from the 2001 city budget allocated to fight dengue hemorrhagic fever, an official says.

Tini Suryanti, head of the dengue elimination division of the agency, said here on Monday that the administration should have released the money to fund programs to fight dengue.

"We have had to use the remaining medicines and other supporting materials we bought with funds from last year's budget," said Tini.

Her office spent Rp 3 billion on preventing dengue outbreaks, including the purchase of medicines, last year.

The agency recorded 831 dengue fever cases in the capital from the beginning of this year to Feb. 2.

East Jakarta had the most with 286 cases, South Jakarta had 176 cases, West Jakarta 152, North Jakarta 122 and Central Jakarta had 95 cases.

Four people have died of the disease this year.

The agency earlier warned that at least 43 out of 265 subdistricts were vulnerable to dengue. Most of them are in East Jakarta.

In a related development, the secretary of the City Council Commission E on welfare, Ishak Iskandar, said the administration had been sluggish in dealing with dengue.

"The deadly disease hits the capital annually. The administration should have learned from experience and taken appropriate steps without waiting until the disease spreads more and takes more victims."

The fever is carried by aedes aegypty mosquitoes, which lay their eggs on the surface of still water.

Ishak said that the commission would soon invite the city administration officials to explain their plans to fight the disease.

He claimed residents were to blame for not maintaining their environment.

Meanwhile, Governor Sutiyoso said the city administration had continually stepped up its dengue fever prevention campaign, called 3M, in which communities are encouraged to scrub and cover household water tanks and buckets, and bury old cans.

Currently, 68 hospitals and 265 community health centers across the capital have been put on alert for an expected outbreak of dengue in the middle of this month. (04)