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n 2014, Indonesia set an ambitious target of being dengue-free by 2020. However, it seems unlikely that the goal will be achieved unless the country makes a radical change to its strategy.

Dengue cases nationwide have increased significantly. The Health Ministry recorded 9,600 cases in January across 372 cities and regencies, with four declaring extraordinary occurrence: Kupang and West Manggarai regencies in East Nusa Tenggara, Kapuas regency in Central Kalimantan and North Sulawesi province. The outbreak has claimed over 176 lives so far.

The incidence rate has continued to grow this month, and additional regencies have reported an outbreak. With the rainy season predicted to last through February, more people may contract dengue.

Indonesia has been battling dengue for decades, but why does it return to haunt us every year? First, it has become habit to blame the weather (rainy season) as the primary cause of the mosquito-borne disease with a “business as usual” reaction.

Second, managing dengue emphasizes “easy approaches” like fogging and Mosquito Nest Eradication (PSN), to cite Duane Gubler, a professor of emerging infectious diseases at Singapore’s Duke-NUS Medical School. These approaches have indeed been very important and effective in dealing with dengue, but only at a small scale and over a limited duration.

Dengue in Indonesia concerns a very large population and involves many determinants, such as climate and rainfall. We need a comprehensive and novel solution that can accommodate the big picture.

The key to addressing dengue in a populous country like Indonesia lies in disease prevention and forecast. Preventive steps can materialize only if big data is available to provide accurate information and correct applications that can generate risk maps and forecast a disease outbreak.

Such an approach can cover a large population and area while alerting officials on the next possible outbreaks and highlight potential infection risk zones.

Health Ministerial Regulation No. 92/2014 on data sharing under an integrated health information system and Health Minister Decision No. 1479/2003 on Guidelines for Infectious and Non-Infectious Diseases Surveillance System underline the importance of data in health sector. However, they contain superficial substance and focus merely on mechanisms and procedures for integrating data in managing outbreaks of disease.

The experiences of our Asian neighbors teach Indonesia a valuable lesson. Several countries known for their unrelenting fight against dengue like Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Pakistan are now using big data to forecast outbreaks. In Sri Lanka and Bangladesh, information and communications technology policy and regulation think-tank LIRNEasia has used mobile network big data (MNBD) to build computer-generated models that are able to forecast dengue outbreaks.

This approach helps the two countries craft spatial risk maps based on correlated analysis of call data records (CDR) and dengue incidences. As far as the mechanism is concerned, the in-country mobility patterns that the CDR reveals could be used to accurately predict the geographical spread and timing of outbreaks in the locations of recent epidemics and emerging trouble spots.

In Pakistan, combining climate data with the CDRs of around 40 million Pakistani mobile phone subscribers — which represent 22 percent of the country’s population — a Harvard group was able to predict the spreading pattern of dengue outbreaks. The analysis matched the trajectory of the dengue virus in a 2013 epidemic to the travel patterns of mobile users and found that it could predict the outbreaks fairly accurately.

There is great potential in implementing such approaches in Indonesia, considering that it has 371 million mobile phone numbers of which two-thirds use smartphones. The latest Communication and Information Ministry data found that 143 million Indonesians were connected to the internet. The large number of mobile phone and internet users can help eliminate dengue, only if the health ministry can integrate the utilization of MNBD.

The Health Ministry bears the responsibility for incorporating dengue and CDR data with the help of the information ministry and other stakeholders. At the grassroots level, the Health Ministry should integrate the PSN program and dengue surveillance with the collection of mobile data. The mechanism requires public education that encourages citizens to use their mobile phones to report any dengue incidence through a chat facility.

Official data from state and healthcare authorities, combined with data sourced from social media and search engines will provide a more comprehensive picture of real-time dengue outbreaks.

The traditional dengue prevention measure of draining, closing and burying should incorporate the results of health information technology (HIT). Merging HIT and big data will enable direct reporting of dengue incidences and real-time monitoring of the dengue status.

This will provide the public with valuable and actionable data on which they can take appropriate decisions.

Instead of relying on easy approaches to kill mosquitoes, investing in HIT and big data could stop dengue in the long term. It is no longer the time to blame the rain, but the time to take advantage of big data in combating dengue.