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Ministry admits government can do little about Zika virus

The government was unable to do much to anticipate the spread of the Zika virus, Health Ministry secretary-general Untung Suseno Sutarjo acknowledged on Tuesday, as the virus was hard to detect and its symptoms similar to those of other mosquito-borne viruses

Hans Nicholas Jong and Ina Parlina (The Jakarta Post)
Jakarta
Wed, February 3, 2016

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Ministry admits government can do little about Zika virus

The government was unable to do much to anticipate the spread of the Zika virus, Health Ministry secretary-general Untung Suseno Sutarjo acknowledged on Tuesday, as the virus was hard to detect and its symptoms similar to those of other mosquito-borne viruses.

Responding to the WHO declaration of a global emergency over the explosive spread of Zika in Geneva a day earlier, Untung advised Indonesians to be cautious regarding the disease, including by refraining from visiting Zika-affected areas.

'€œWe are telling people to be cautious as a preventive measure. What else can we do? After all, there is no medicine available,'€ Untung said.

He added that it was also hard to detect people who had been infected by the virus.

 '€œWe don'€™t know whether people are sick with the virus, because the symptoms are usually mild,'€ the official said.

Citing the ministry data, Untung said of five Indonesians known to have contracted the virus, only one of them had fallen sick with a fever, with the other four showing no symptoms whatsoever.

As with efforts to prevent dengue fever, Untung advised people to use mosquito nets while sleeping and to apply mosquito repellent.

 '€œIf someone goes to a region [where the virus has spread], that person must report if they fall sick after returning home,'€ he said.

Indonesia has a history of Zika infections dating back to 1981. According to several studies, Zika was found in Indonesia in 1981 and in 2005, Untung said.

The Eijkman Institute for Molecular Biology warned in a recent report that the virus had been spreading for some time. A Zika infection was found among 103 dengue specimens that the institute took during an outbreak in Jambi between December 2014 and April 2015.

The fast-spreading Zika virus is likely being under-diagnosed in Southeast Asia, infectious disease experts have warned in several reports, including one regarding an Australian who was infected after being bitten by a monkey in Bali.

A report last year into the case of a 27-year-old Australian man  proposed that a monkey bite he had received at the Ubud Monkey Forest could have been to blame for his subsequent Zika infection.
The man was diagnosed with acute Zika virus after arriving at the Royal Darwin Hospital with a fever and a rash seven days after the bite, the report stated. He had also been bitten by mosquitoes while holidaying in Bali.

The authors of the report, including doctors from the hospital and academics from the Victorian Diseases Reference Laboratory and the Menzies School of Health Research, wrote that while mosquito-borne transmission was possible, the monkey was also a plausible route of transmission.

Commenting on the report, Untung said that he had never heard of it. '€œWhere did that story come from? That'€™s nonsense. Who is spreading this fraudulent conjecture? The carrier [of the virus] is mosquitoes, not monkey bites,'€ he said.

Meanwhile, President Joko '€œJokowi'€ Widodo has instructed Health Minister Nila Moeloek to pay attention to and be cautious of the Zika virus.

'€œAlthough it has yet to occur here, it needs to be kept an eye on,'€ presidential spokesman Johan Budi said on Tuesday.
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