Health Office: East Belitung Is Free Of Careless Defecation, 6 Other Regencies Follow

Head of the Bangka Belitung Islands Provincial Health Office Andri Nurtito (Aprionist)

BANGKA BELITUNG - Head of the Bangka Belitung Islands (Babel) Provincial Health Office (Dinkes) Andri Nurtito stated, East Belitung as a district free to defecate (BAB) carelessly or Open Defecation Free (ODF). "Currently, only one of the seven regencies and cities are free to defecate carelessly," said Andri Nurtito in Pangkalpinang, Antara, Thursday, June 8. Six regencies/cities that have not been 100 percent free to defecate carelessly are Bangka, Central Bangka, West Bangka, South Bangka, Belitung, and Pangkalpinang City. "Currently, Pangkalpinang City is still in the process of heading to a free city to defecate carelessly and hopefully this year, this provincial capital has been designated as a free city to defecate carelessly," he said. According to him, this careless defecation behavior is one of the factors causing stunting, so it takes joint effort to make the Babel Islands free of defecation. "The BAB will carelessly become a source of infection, carry flies to the food, then children eat from polluted plates or food from flies that carry food from human waste," he said. Then there will be infections that cause children to have fever, do not want to eat, and stunting occurs. "I hope there will be joint supervision with the community, the press, across sectors, and stakeholders to reprimand and report if there are people who defecate carelessly," he said.