Malaria cases sharply increase nationwide

Agus Maryono, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

Malaria cases have been on the rise since 1998, and have so far occurred in 13 provinces, 16 districts and 106 villages throughout the country, a senior ministry of health official said on Friday.

Director General of Communicable Disease Eradication and Environmental Health Umar Fahmi Achmadi said the disease had struck 15 million Indonesians.

"The number of malaria cases has sharply increased in the past three years," he said, adding that acute malaria outbreaks went up from 18 to 48 in the Bali-Java region since 1998.

Umar revealed that there were several factors behind the prevalence of malaria in recent years.

"The malaria outbreaks are being attributed to environmental issues, caused by bad management of shrimp ponds, illegal sand exploration and illegal mangrove logging," he said.

Population mobility also contributed, he said.

"People, from malaria-free areas, come to the infected areas, and this adds the number of people infected with the disease in the areas," he said.

Aside from those two factors, there was also another factor namely the climate change. He said that the rainy season, which is the "high" season for malaria, was longer than the dry season this year.

Authorities have pledged to carry out mosquito abatement in some affected areas, which comprises 15,000 households, later this month.