15 Banyuwangi residents suffer elephantiasis

BANYUWANGI: At least 13 people in Banyuwangi are suffering from elephantiasis, and two others have died from the disease, an official at the regency Health Agency said Thursday.

The agency's infectious disease eradication section head Mohammad Izzudin, however, said Banyuwangi was not a elephantiasis pandemic area, arguing that most of the sufferers had spent a large part of their lives outside Java in Sumatra and Bali.

"As the symptoms emerge only 10 years after being infected, there is a big possibility that they caught the disease while living outside Banyuwangi," he said.

He added that to prevent the disease from spreading further, his agency had been increasing efforts to eliminate mosquitos, as carriers of the disease.

The agency, he said, had also been conducting simple blood tests to detect the spread of microscopic filaria worm larvae, which are the cause of elephantiasis, in human blood samples.

Elephantiasis was first found in Banyuwangi in 2000. Sufferers, aged between 23 and 75 years, are spread across the districts of Banyuwangi, Glagah, Tegaldlimo, Purwoharjo, Rogojampi and Genteng. - JP