Students bite back in dengue war
The Jakarta Post, Jakarta
It was half past nine in the morning. Mujtahid, a student at a public health university, rushed into the Pasar Minggu subdistrict health clinic in South Jakarta to inform the doctor on duty that groups of students were ready to start their regular Friday battle against the Aedes aegypti mosquito.
"Doctor, my friends are waiting in the community secretariat. Some groups have already gone down to neighborhoods in the north. We must hurry, I'm afraid we're going to be late," worried Mujtahid, who had been appointed group coordinator from the Hamka Muhammadiyah University, South Jakarta.
The voluntary task force consists of students, a doctor, and a concerned people from the neighborhood. When they got together Mujtahid gave a short briefing to remind them how to approach residents in order to involve them in the effort to eradicate breeding places for the mosquito that carries the dengue fever virus.
"Okay, we shall start from neighborhood five. Are we ready?" shouted Mujtahid to motivate his fellow students.
Mujtahid was among 150 students from three different universities in Jakarta volunteering for the weekly campaign against dengue in neighborhoods in the Pasar Minggu and West Pejaten subdistricts of South Jakarta, every Friday, from 9:30 a.m. to 10 a.m.
Students from various universities and nursing academies in Jakarta have joined forces to battle dengue fever, which has infected over 3,000 Jakartans and caused 21 deaths since the beginning of January. The volunteers have been encouraging people, especially those living in endemic areas, to apply a few simple actions to fight the disease.
Firstly, the students invite neighborhood and community leaders to sound the neighborhood alarms to announce their arrival.
Then, going door to door, the students hand out brochures, informing people about the three steps they should take to eliminate the Aedes aegypti mosquito's breeding places. They then take brief tours of homes to help residents identify problem areas and to show them how to take preventive actions.
The students also put up posters and banners in public areas, which they hope will make more people aware of how to fight dengue fever.
According to Mujtahid, most people focus on the environment in and around houses and tend to forget that other places, such as schools, old theaters or warehouses, also provide fertile breeding grounds for the mosquitoes that lay their eggs in clear standing water.
"Last week, I found several empty cans and plastic containers dumped at the back of a schoolyard in Pasar Minggu. Inside, there were dozens of mosquito larvae," said Mujtahid.
Another student said that she had seen a very bad mosquito breeding place during her volunteer work.
"There was a small house I went into, located in an alley in a slum area. The house was so damp and dimly-lit, and I think the owner of the house was kind of sick. When I checked the water tub and other water containers, I found hundreds of mosquito larvae. After seeing that, I couldn't eat," she said.
Yunita, a fourth year student at the Department of Public Health of the University of Indonesia in Depok, along with seven university friends who also joined the campaign, said that many people still lacked awareness and had little concern about fighting the annual dengue epidemics.
"We checked back at some of the houses that were full of mosquito breeding places the first time, and they still have them. That showed that people living there weren't listening to our advice," said Yunita. (001)