Ministry of Health: Mycoplasma Is Common Cause of Pneumonia and Respiratory Infections

JAKARTA - Director of Prevention and Control of Infectious Diseases at the Ministry of Health (Kemenkes) Imran Pambudi said that mycoplasma, the bacteria that causes pneumonia outbreaks in children in China, was a common bacteria that caused respiratory infections before COVID-19.

"In China, mycoplasma is the most common cause of pneumonia. Mycoplasma is a bacteria, not a virus, and was a common cause of respiratory infections before the COVID-19 era," said Imran as reported by ANTARA, Wednesday, November 29.

He explained, mycoplasma is a common cause of influenza and lung disease, with an incidence of 8.6 percent, and based on information from the World Health Organization (WHO), there has been an increase in cases of mycoplasma pneumonia since May 2023 in China.

"WHO detected signals of undiagnosed pneumonia, especially in children, which was published in the journal Promed on November 22 2023. As many as 3 out of 4 patients were diagnosed as infected with mycoplasma, in addition to other influences such as SARS-COV and influenza," he said.

Imran explained that this pathogen has a fairly long incubation and spread period, so it can be called walking pneumonia.

"So it's a bit different from COVID-19, if COVID-19 has a short incubation time, mycoplasma is quite long. In China, it mostly appears in children and mainly appears when the summer changes," he said.

He also explained that there had been an increase in outpatient and inpatient cases in children in China caused by the bacteria mycoplasma pneumoniae since May 2023, as well as from respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), adenovirus, and influenza since October 2023, where there has now been a decline.

"In China, an increase in pneumonia has occurred in the past 3-5 years, and based on research there, adenovirus and RSV have been the cause in recent years," he said.

Even though the mycoplasma bacteria has not been detected in Indonesia, based on data from the Ministry of Health, there has been an increase in the general trend of pneumonia in several provinces after the COVID-19 pandemic.

"After the pandemic was over, sick people started coming back to health facilities with symptoms similar to COVID-19, such as influenza and all kinds. The trend is that in all provinces we see an increase," said Imran.

Based on routine data collected by the Directorate General of Disease Prevention and Control (P2PM) of the Ministry of Health, from January to September 2023, nationally, Central Java is the province with the highest incidence of respiratory tract infections (ARI), both in community health centers and hospitals (more than 2.5 million cases), followed by West Java (more than 2 million cases), and DKI Jakarta (more than 1 million cases).

"Judging from pneumonia cases, it is different from ARI to pneumonia. If pneumonia is a disease that has entered the lungs, here the most common is West Java, and in terms of trend, this looks high at the beginning of the year, then gradually decreases, until "October-November 2023 will be the lowest number compared to previous months," he explained.

"Then if we look at the incidence, this incident per 100 thousand people, the highest incidence is DKI Jakarta, both ISPA and pneumonia, and this increase occurs when air pollution is high around September-October," he added.

Imran emphasized that regarding supervision or surveillance of pneumonia and ARI diseases, the Ministry of Health has carried out further monitoring of influenza like illness (ILI), namely surveillance for cases that have influenza-like symptoms, as a continuation of surveillance for COVID-19.