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Jakarta Post

Malaria resurfaces in Ciamis coastal area

After a two-year absence In West Java, malaria once again struck the Ciamis coastal area, in the Cijulang district, with health officials reporting three cases of the mosquito-borne disease this year, some four kilometers away of the renowned Pangandaran Beach tourist resort

Yuli Tri Suwarni (The Jakarta Post)
Bandung
Tue, May 19, 2009

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Malaria resurfaces in Ciamis coastal area

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fter a two-year absence In West Java, malaria once again struck the Ciamis coastal area, in the Cijulang district, with health officials reporting three cases of the mosquito-borne disease this year, some four kilometers away of the renowned Pangandaran Beach tourist resort.

Head of the provincial health agency Alma Luchyati said her office had been conducting an epidemiologic surveillance to investigate the pattern and source of the infection, including searching for Anopheles mosquito nests.

Alma said that up to now, Ciamis was still categorized as a malaria-endemic region, mostly because of its coastal location and vast forests where mosquitoes like to nest.

"We have not recorded any cases of malaria for several years. Probably a change in the climate has caused the disease to resurface," Alma, or Lucy as she is more popularly addressed, told The Jakarta Post, Monday.

Head of the agency's sanitary sub-agency Fita Rosemary said regardless of the absence of malaria cases, a health team had always been put on alert for a possible reemergence of the disease in malaria-endemic Ciamis.

"We have indeed been receiving reports of the reemergence of malaria in Ciamis for the last three months, with one new case each month," Fita said.

Fita also said local residents were being tested for malaria but results had been negative so far. So it was mostly infected patients that were being monitored, in an effort to track down whether they came from the region.

"We are collecting data from the field and have yet to declare it an extraordinary occurrence," she said.

The data from the Ciamis regency health agency showed the three new cases of malaria were reported in Cijulang district, but two other neighboring districts of Pangandaran and Cimerak had also been put on the alert list.

Ciamis was one of five regions declared malaria-endemic in 2004. The other four regions were Sukabumi, Cianjur, Tasikmalaya and Garut. All have the same topography of vast forest areas along the province's southern coastal regions.

The provincial health agency gave an extraordinary occurrence status to Sukabumi in 2004 after over 500 people contracted malaria, eight of whom died.

In 2007, the agency recorded some 17,800 suspected cases of malaria, but only 93 of them proved to be actual cases, and all were cured. A fatality due to malaria was last reported the same year in Kuningan, when eight people were reported to have malaria.

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