Ananta Wijaya had to spend his weekend at Bhakti Rahayu Hospital in Denpasar, after a nauseating high fever weakened him. The hospital lab later confirmed he had gotten through a serious bout of dengue fever.

Ananta, a freelance journalist, said he felt lucky to have identified the dengue symptoms before the disease got worst.

"I thought my fever was weird because I hurt all over at the same time." Ananta then went straight for a blood test.

"At first they thought I had typhoid, then they told me I had dengue."

Ananta may have avoided a tragic fate. Earlier this month, a boy died at Sanglah Hospital after passing into the acute stage of the viral disease.

Dengue fever, otherwise known as dengue hemorrhagic fever, is caused by the dengue virus. Symptoms include acute fever, headaches, joint and muscle pain and red splotches on the skin which signal internal bleeding and a drop in the number of white blood cells, called leucopenia.

Doctors have recently been urging the public to be on the lookout for the disease because dengue cases tend to increase between February and May.

because of the rainy season. We think cases of dengue fever will increase dramatically," said Subrata, head of the Bali Health Agency's disease eradication and environmental health division.

The increasing number of dengue infections in Bali continued unabated for four years running. The 1,890 cases in 2004 were surpassed by the 3,594 cases in 2005. The figure increased again in 2006 to 5,631 then reached an all-time high with 6,375 in 2007.

The number dropped last year alone to 5,961 cases, 16 of which were fatal.

Subrata's main concern is that public awareness about dengue fever remains low: Even with the ebb in incidentsstill higher than 2006 numbers25 cases have already been reported this year.

Subrata said the agency has committing itself to meeting the four requirements for preventing a dengue epidemic: promotion, prevention, epidemiological analysis and vector control by eradicating mosquitoes nests and fogging.

He said the public remains unaware of the importance of vector control, namely, getting rid of standing pools of water where mosquitoes, dengue carriers, need to breed.

awareness has just not reached our expectations yet," Subrata said.

He blamed the lack of vector control on the public's dependency on fogging, which he said was actually a last resort since fogging only kills adult mosquitoes while their nests and larvae remain.

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