Dengue hits 19 provinces in Indonesia

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Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Saturday, February 21, 2004

Dengue hits 19 provinces in Indonesia

The dengue fever outbreak has spread to 19 of Indonesia's 32 provinces, with the death toll from the outbreak approaching 200.

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The dengue fever outbreak has spread to 19 of Indonesia's 32 provinces, with the death toll from the outbreak approaching 200.

According to the secretary-general of the Directorate General of Communicable Diseases, Syafii Ahmad, the government had recorded 10,140 dengue cases with 195 deaths, mostly in Central Java, East Java and Jakarta.

Syafii said that despite the escalation of the outbreak, the government had no plans to declare it an epidemic.

"The law requires us to maintain the level of the outbreak as an extraordinary occurrence or national catastrophe because the death toll this year is still around double last year's figure. Itis not that easy to change the status," Syafii was quoted on Saturday by The Jakarta Post as saying.

An epidemic can be declared only if the casualty rate surges to10 times higher than the previous year, Syafii said.

Syafii said the health ministry had obtained 150 billion rupiah(17 million US dollars) in emergency funds to fight the outbreak. Because a national catastrophe has been declared, poor dengue patients are entitled to treatment at no charge.

Meanwhile, a dengue expert at the University of Indonesia said domestic and foreign scientists were developing a vaccine for the virus, but it would be at least three years before the vaccine wascomplete.

"It is difficult to create a vaccine that can kill all of the different types of the virus," said Prof. R.H.H. Nelwan, head of tropical and infectious diseases at the university's School of Medicine.

Source:Xinhua

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