The Jakarta Globe, October 16, 2013.
Cianjur, West Java. Hundreds of residents have been hospitalized in Cidaun subdistrict, as local health officials reported a possible outbreak of dengue fever on Wednesday.
Villagers in the Bobojong hamlet in Cidamar village have reportedly come down with high fevers and joint pain in the past week. The affected residents also exhibited red rashes — a symptom of the dengue virus — Cidaun Polyclinic head Ade Wahyudin said.
“We conducted laboratory tests to ascertain whether this was really dengue or something else,” Ade said. “But judging from the symptoms, it appears to be dengue.”
It may be the first dengue outbreak reported in the subdistrict, an area not typically known as a breeding ground for the aedes aegypti mosquito — the carrier of dengue and chikungunya. In the first nine months of the year, Cidaun reported only three cases of dengue fever. Now, in less than a month, local health officials are looking at hundreds of possible cases.
“The mosquitoes that are behind dengue and chikungunya outbreaks cannot actually live in environments like Cidaun,” Ade said. “The temperature is hot and near the coast. Usually these mosquitoes do not live in such an environment.”
Indonesia’s Ministry of Health reported some 49,000 cases of dengue fever nationwide in the first six months of 2013, according to reports on the Indonesian news portal Tempo.co. Some 376 fatalities were reported midyear. It was an increase over last year’s figures, when some 90,000 cases were reported by the end of the year.
The ministry’s director of animal-borne disease control expressed concern that abnormal weather and spreading mosquito populations would cause dengue and chikungunya cases to spike this year.
“Indonesia is facing an epidemic,” Andi Muhadir told Tempo.co. “It can now happen anytime during the year.”
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do 17 okt 2013 - 5:51