{"id":205763,"date":"2025-02-06T16:17:00","date_gmt":"2025-02-06T22:17:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/02\/indonesias-new-capital-could-become-a-hot-spot-for-infectious-diseases"},"modified":"2025-02-06T16:17:00","modified_gmt":"2025-02-06T22:17:00","slug":"indonesias-new-capital-could-become-a-hot-spot-for-infectious-diseases","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/02\/indonesias-new-capital-could-become-a-hot-spot-for-infectious-diseases","title":{"rendered":"Indonesia\u2019s new capital could become a hot spot for infectious diseases"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/indonesias-new-capital-could-become-a-hot-spot-for-infectious-diseases.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>A 2020 assessment of IKN by the National Planning and Development Agency highlighted the risks, citing data including the abundance of disease-carrying mosquitoes. At least two construction workers caught malaria in 2022 while at the site, according to the Ministry of Health. Last year, 54 cases were reported there, but the ministry claimed the patients were infected elsewhere. Although the construction authority has taken some control measures, such as handing out mosquito nets to workers, it\u2019s not well-equipped for the job, says Mirza Buana, a legal scholar at Lambung Mangkurat University in South Kalimantan: \u201cIt has all the authorities but no capabilities.\u201d The agency has shifted most of the tasks\u2014such as vector control and screening workers entering or leaving IKN\u2014to district health officials, who have struggled to keep up.<\/p>\n<p>Surendra is particularly worried about the potential spread of <em>P. knowlesi<\/em>, a parasite first discovered in the 1930s. It <a href=\"https:\/\/linkinghub.elsevier.com\/retrieve\/pii\/S0140673604158364\">emerged as a public health threat in the early 2000s<\/a>, in areas in the Malaysian part of Borneo where forests were cleared for oil palm plantations. It has since been <a href=\"https:\/\/journals.plos.org\/plosntds\/article?id=10.1371\/journal.pntd.0008900\">identified in many Southeast Asian countries<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p><em>P. knowlesi<\/em> primarily infects long-tailed macaques, highly adaptable monkeys that thrive at the forest edge, and is spread by forest-dwelling <em>Anopheles<\/em> mosquitoes that occasionally bite humans as well. People working in or near the forest, including hunters and loggers, are at the highest risk. Because it has an animal reservoir, the disease is impossible to eliminate completely. Mosquitoes don\u2019t transmit <em>P. knowlesi<\/em> between people\u2014or very poorly\u2014but some scientists worry that could change.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A 2020 assessment of IKN by the National Planning and Development Agency highlighted the risks, citing data including the abundance of disease-carrying mosquitoes. At least two construction workers caught malaria in 2022 while at the site, according to the Ministry of Health. Last year, 54 cases were reported there, but the ministry claimed the patients [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":662,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,1495,1496],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-205763","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biotech-medical","category-health","category-law"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/205763","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/662"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=205763"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/205763\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=205763"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=205763"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=205763"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}