Health officials move to curb malaria outbreak

Health officials move to curb malaria outbreak

The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

The Health Office of the regency of Banyumas, Central Java,
finally responded to the reports of a massive malaria epidemic by
conducting on Monday several blood tests and treatment for anyone
suffering from malaria in the five districts hit hardest by the
illness.

The belated measures were finally taken by the regency health
office following the (regency) Legislative Council's threat to
fire the head of the regency Health Office Choerul Mufid for
failing to prevent or respond to reports that 54 people had died
in the last month and as many as 10,000 are infected.

The head of Sumpiuh Public Health Center, Drajat, said on
Monday that besides conducting blood tests and communal treatment
the health office also took some mosquito abatement measures in
the area. "The team of paramedics also distributed preventive
medicine such as Chloroquine and Abate powder to the residents."

The Abate powder is used to kill the larvae of mosquitoes in
water tanks and puddles.

The Banyumas regency, located in Central Java (previously
reported erroneously) has five districts; Sumpiuh, Kemranjen,
Tambak, Somagede and Banyumas.

Data from Sumpiuh district head M. Najib dated Jan. 5, 2001
stated that 19 people in three villages, Bogangin, Banjar Paneten
and Ketanda died from malaria in December.

Last week, the head of Karangginntung village in the district
of Kemranjen reported that 27 villagers had died from illnesses
with symptoms that are similar to that of malaria, chills and
fever, but no medical exams were carried out.

The regency legislative council also revealed early this month
that eight people in the village of Watu Agung in the Tambak
district had died from malaria. More than 8,000 people currently
suffer from malaria, according to their report.

The head of the provincial Health Office, Krishna Jaya flatly
denied the reports on Monday, telling reporters in Semarang that
only one person had died of malaria in Banyumas regency.

"Malaria is endemic in Central Java. But so far we found only
one of 21 patients died from malaria falciparum. The other
20 were suffering from malaria vivax which is less dangerous," he
said.

Malaria is a serious illness transmitted by the "bite" of the
female Anopheles mosquito which has parasitic protozoa of the
genus plasmodium falciparum, plasmodium malariae, plasmodium
vivax. All these types attack red blood cells.

Krishna claimed that blood tests on the 287 villagers of
Ketanda in Sumpiuh showed that 128 of the villagers had malaria,
mostly caused by the vivax plasmodium. "The blood tests were
performed by the provincial team as Banyumas has no experts in
such matters," he said, while not revealing when the tests took
place.

Records from the hospitals showed that there had been 33
malaria patients, and "only one of them died," Krishna
reiterated.

Records made by the provincial Health Office indicate that
there were 40,568 malaria cases in the province, or 55,359 less
than the previous year.

Malaria is also endemic in the regencies of Purworejo,
Magelang, Kebumen, Banjarnegara, Cilacap and Wonosobo in Central
Java.

In Jakarta Director General of Eradication of Contagious
Disease and Environmental Health Umar Fahmi Achmadi said that
people's mobility from one island to another in the country had
increased the spread of the disease. "Two-thirds of the country
has been declared malarial."

"The prolonged economic crisis has lessened the government's
ability to afford medication and insecticide to prevent the
spread of malaria," he said. "The resistance against the existing
medicines may also contribute to this revival of malaria."

Umar said in August of last year that, with the exception of
Jakarta, all provinces in the country had areas vulnerable to
malaria, with Irian Jaya at the top followed by Maluku and East
Nusa Tenggara.

In 1959 then-president Sukarno officially launched the use of
the chemical DDT (chlorophenothane, dicophane) to eradicate
malaria, by symbolically spraying the powerful insecticide at
houses in Kalasan, Yogyakarta.

After 1959 the number of malarial cases in Java, Bali and the
island of Madura gradually dropped. The "golden age" of DDT was
in 1963 when almost 64 million people living in malarial areas in
Java and Lampung were reportedly saved by house-to-house
spraying.

The number of malarial cases went up again in 1967. Observers
blamed the political situation (Indonesian Communist Party's coup
was in 1965, followed by the New Order) and perhaps the Anopheles
mosquito's resistance against DDT in Central and East Java for
this.

DDT has also been known to cause cancer and birth defects.