Few weeks ago a guy from Skype chat was asking me about what kind of disease in Indonesia. He's from USA and never been to Indonesia before, and he probably imagined Indonesia is a country full of diseases (?) Maybe in some rural or isolated area it's true. In my experience, when I was living in Sumbawa Island for few months, Malaria was a common disease among the population. In the health center,
where I was in duty, new case of Malaria probably 1-3 each day (or even more in certain season). Some people in Java gave me advice to took Quinine as a prophylactic for Malaria -but it was only lasted for 4 weeks- because then I found out that only people lived in particular area who were vulnerable to the mosquito.
The mosquito - Anopheles sp- apparently likes to make their nest in a water where river flow met the salt water from the sea.
So in several area, for example, people lived near the sea, they are much more vulnerable to Malaria.
And planting Mangrove tress could prevent the Anopheles sp to built the nest, unfortunately most of the people there did not know this.
So they often cut down the trees (they sold it for money cause most of them very poor) and for the result Malaria increasing in months.
But if there are people who wants to go vacation to Indonesia, this should not make you getting paranoid because it's not easily transmitted however.
You don't have to take prophylactic either, except if you have to go to high epidemic areas of Malaria.
More source about Malaria and Anopheles :
cdc.gov
wikipedia.org
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