Agence France-Presse
175 die from mosquito-borne virus
JAKARTA An outbreak of dengue fever has killed at least 175 people as of Thursday, and a health official warned that floods beginning to inundate Jakarta and other cities would worsen the situation.
The mosquito-borne outbreak has spread to four more provinces and infected 8,735 people in a total of 12 provinces since Jan. 1, said Dr. Mariani Reksoprojo of the Health Ministry, who called the outbreak "extraordinary."
Most of the cases are on Java, where more than half of Indonesia's 212 million people live. The number of infections is more than double those in the same period last year.
Reksoprojo said the death toll had risen to 175 on Thursday morning. Several days of rain that has caused flooding in the capital and other cities will swell the number of dengue cases, she said, adding, "It's clear it will worsen the situation." Local newspaper reports on Thursday said 1,800 people were forced to flee flooded homes in one Jakarta neighborhood while more than 1,000 homes on the city's outskirts were submerged.
Television pictures showed waist-high water in one West Jakarta neighborhood, and knee-high floodwater had washed across parts of roads and entered buildings in the east of the capital.
Reksoprojo said the impact from flooding would be indirect because the female aedes mosquitoes, which transmit dengue viruses, do not breed in muddy flood waters.
They prefer clean water from containers like earthenware jars, cisterns, discarded plastic food containers or used automobile tires, and other items that collect rainwater or drops that fall from an air conditioner. But because of the flooding will cause disruption, people will not be able to devote enough attention to keeping their environment clean, which is the key to avoiding dengue, Reksoprojo said. There is no vaccine or cure for dengue hemorrhagic fever.
Indonesian health officials suspect a new virus strain could be responsible for the outbreak.
But Dr. Georg Petersen, the head of the World Health Organization in Indonesia, said it was hard to say whether a new strain was involved in the outbreak, which was not totally unexpected. "Every year there has been a steady increase in dengue cases all over Southeast Asia," he said.
Dengue also peaks in cycles of about five years, and the current infections come at the peak of that cycle, he said.