ISPA Cases In Jakarta Begin To Drop In The Last 2 Weeks

Illustration of cough due to acute respiratory tract infection (ISPA) (Pexels-Andrea Piacquadio)

JAKARTA - The DKI Jakarta Health Office noted a decrease in the number of respiratory infection cases such as ARI, pneumonia, and influenza in the last two weeks, starting from September 14, 2023. "The ISPA case in the third week of September fell 7 percent compared to the second week, pneumonia fell 18 percent, and influenza like illness (ILI) fell 29 percent from the previous week," said Head of the Surveillance, Epidemiology and Immunization Section of the Health Service Ngabila Salama to reporters, Wednesday, September 27. Ngabila said that the decline in respiratory cases in the midst of high Jakarta air pollution was known from the results of observations with the Indonesian Ministry of Health by the website of the Indonesian Ministry of Health whose data was inputted every day by all sub-district health centers, village health centers, and hospitals in DKI Jakarta. He explained that data from ISPA, ILI, pneumonia were reported every day by all sub-district and sub-district health centers, while pneumonia data was reported by all hospitals through the surveillance-dinkes.jakarta.go.id system, which then recapitulated the 194 hospital report. daily reported by the DKI Jakarta Health Office to the website of the Indonesian Ministry of Health. According to Ngabila, the decline in respiratory cases occurred thanks to collaboration between the government, business actors, academics, and the public for their awareness of controlling air pollution and anticipating respiratory disease. "This is the result of hard work together. The central and regional governments continue to synergize to quickly reduce air pollution, especially PM 2.5 which endangers health," explained Ngabila. Furthermore, Ngabila said that the WFH policy implemented by the DKI Provincial Government was also felt to be effective enough to quickly control air pollution levels and ultimately affect the number of ISPA and pneumonia cases whose trends decreased. Several months ago, the DKI Jakarta Health Office recorded an average of one hundred thousand residents in Jakarta who were infected with respiratory tract infections or ISPA every month.

Based on data from the ISPA report in DKI Jakarta in 2023, there were 102,609 cases of ARI in January, 104,638 cases in February, 119,734 in March, 109,705 in April, 99,130 in May, and 102,475 in June.