Being breeding grounds for mosquitoes infected malaria and dengue fever, Ternate and Cimahi started to act up against these diseases. Besides fogging program, Ternate Health Agency also initiated a free-give-away nets program for citizens to be installed in their house ventilation with the hope to clear away mosquitoes.
In addition to the net program and indoor residual spraying, the agency also distributes netting for pregnant women and toddlers as they are most prone to malaria diseases because of limited supplies.
Meanwhile, in Cimahi, the city administration declared ‘Clean Friday’ which was set to move people to clean their environment. The movement also aimed to reduce operational fogging costs of the city. It would cost Rp3 million (US$ 254) for 100-200 meters radius from the center of the case areas, per fogging. “We do not want [Cimahi] budget allocation all spent just for fogging,” said Wawan Setiawan, head of dengue fever program, West Java Health Agency.
The fogging was not effective because it would only last for half day and mosquitoes can return to the same place again.
To tackle dengue fever disease, Cimahi Mayor Atty Suharti Rochija had assigned larva monitoring officers, or known as jumantik, who will be controlling larvae in people’s houses and reporting their findings to the local head of neighborhood.
However, in the development, some of head sub districts manipulated the findings as there were sub districts claimed to have been free of larvae, yet there were plenty of dengue fever cases. They were afraid that the reports will influence their work performance.
As a result, the Mayor started to get school children to be involved as jumantik as kids will be more honest than adults. They were promised pens as gifts if managed to get larvae. The program seemed to work for a few weeks up to when there were increasing larvae collected by the kids. It turned out that the kids bought larvae sold as fish food as they were too eager to get free pens.
The latest development, health agency held a competition for villages manage to found larvae will be rewarded for the best work performance. Another program was to set up fines for houses which have the most larvae.
Even with climate change, both Ternate and Cimahi still optimistic to be able to deal with these diseases. IGG Maha Adi (Jakarta), Januar Hakam (Ternate, Cimahi)[:]