“I have
really understood the issues
related to malaria”, says Mr. Thamrin Wata, the
Culture and Tourism Officer of South Sulawesi province in Indonesia. “It is
very important for my work to know about this
disease, because it is crucial for us to protect our tourist destinations from malaria to make them
more attractive for travellers. Before I joined this malaria working group, I thought that tourism is
only related to sexually transmitted diseases and HIV infections.
But now I have
realized that malaria plays
also a role.
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| A baby sleeps under a bed net in Selayar district © UNICEF Indonesia / 2012 / Asri |
Mr Thamrin Wata has
been working in
the Tourism Office of South Sulawesi province since 1990. During
all this time, he never
received clear information about malaria and so he did not consider malaria a serious disease one
needs to be scared of.
In
October 2012, Mr. Thamrin Wata attended a workshop about malaria in Makassar sponsored by UNICEF in
collaboration with
the Provincial Health Office South Sulawesi. In this workshop he learned
that malaria is a dangerous disease, especially in children and pregnant women,
if not correctly managed by health workers. It is also a problem for holiday destinations,
because tourists, especially foreigners, are scared of malaria infections and prefer
to travel to areas that are free from malaria. As this directly relates to his
work for the Tourism Office of South Sulawesi, Mr. Thamrin Wata decided to
become a member of the malaria working group.
“I
will convey this message to all people who live in tourist destination areas in South Sulawesi, because they have to know how to protect themselves from malaria,
for example by sleeping under bed nets,” Mr. Thamrin Wata promises.
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| Traditional ships like this one are made in Bulukumba © UNICEF Indonesia / 2012 / Laihad |
South Sulawesi has three
tourist destination areas all
of which
have a high risk of
malaria: The
island of Selayar with
its beautiful waters and fish is popular with divers, Tana Toraja has an ancient graveyard
system and Bulukumba
is famous for
its
traditional ship makers. Despite all this natural
beauty and interesting culture, only about 40,000 international tourists visit
the area every year. The local population at risk in these three districts amounts to around 1,066,000 persons, among them
approximately 166,000 children under five years and on average about 11,000
pregnant women.
Some swampy areas in South Sulawesi and also in West Sulawesi are unfortunately good breeding
sites for malaria mosquitos. Therefore, UNICEF has
supported training for health staff in these two provinces to develop a strategic plan to reduce the breeding places
and thus the incidence of malaria. In line with this plan, health staff will
identify the
concerned areas by measuring the
size of each breeeding place.
Then they will mobilize the community to work together in reducing these risk areas. The community is expected to contribute
to these efforts, e.g. through constructing simple drainage, cleaning water
pools from vegetation and removing stagnant water.
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| Swampy area like this forest in Selayar district are ideal mosquito breeding places © UNICEF Indonesia / 2012 / Asri |
UNICEF has also supported a study visit for the malaria teams from South
Sulawesi and from
Polman
district in West Sulawesi to
travel to
Sabang in Aceh province for a study visit. The participants learned about the
malaria eradication experience in Sabang, the high quality integrated malaria, maternal
and child health, and immunization program, environment management and malaria
surveillance of this district. Mr. Saman Lilo, a community leader and retired school headmaster from Polman district, was part of the team. “In Sabang I learned that
the community has to be involved in malaria control, especially related to environment management”, he recalls. “Culturally,
Sabang and Polman are very similar. That’s why I think that in Polman we could
replicate the good practices of Sabang, such as teaching children in school
about mosquitos and their breeding sites and encouraging the community to keep
their homes, gardens and yards clean from stagnant water which would be a potential
mosquito breeding area.”
“We
hope that with a continuous and coordinated effort by all sectors we can together
reduce the number of malaria cases and move forward to malaria pre-elimination
efforts. So malaria will not be a threat anymore – neither for our community
nor for tourists visiting our beautiful provinces! And if one day our tourist
destinations are completely free from malaria, more tourists
will be excited to visit South and West Sulawesi which will improve the
economic situation and the future of our children!” says Mr. Thamrin Wata.
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| A beautiful sunset in Selayar district © UNICEF Indonesia / 2012 / Laihad |
