Head of IMCF Kanisius Kami said the campaign was conducted to commemorate the 4th World`s Malaria Day which is held on every April 25.
"We deliberately organize the long march on Sunday to attract more people to join the campaign in this holiday," Kanisius said here Sunday.
The theme of the campaign is "Eradicate Malaria, Increase Tourist Visits", Kanisius said, adding that the reason of choosing the team was due to malaria`s impacts on development and people`s productivity.
Data from the World Health Organization (WHO) shows around 38,000 people every year or 104 people every day die due to malaria.
"There are around 15 million Indonesians suffer from malaria every year," Kanisius said.
According to Kanisius, when a person is suffering from malaria, he/she would not be able to work for up to 15 days and therefore, it is estimated that around 3.1 trillion to 3.5 trillion rupiahs of people`s income lose due to malaria. So, it also influences people`s productivity.
However, there is no method yet to count the IQ degradation of people with malaria as the disease also attacks the nerve system, Kanisius said.
Meanwhile, data from The World Malaria Report in 2005 shows more than one million children worldwide die due to malaria. Eighty percent of them are in Africa and 15 percent in Asia, Kanisius said.
Therefore, malaria becomes one of the 10 diseases make the government concerned, Kanisius said.
"There are 3.2 billion people in 107 countries worldwide suffer from malaria," Kanisius said.
Indonesia was one of the countries which have the highest risk of malaria transmission as 107 millions of its citizens live in malaria endemic areas across 310 districts/municipalities or 70.3 percent of them in the 32 Indonesian provinces, Kanisius said.
The top six provinces with high malaria endemic status are Maluku, North Maluku, Papua, West Papua, North Sumatra (Nias and South Nias) and East Nusa Tenggara, Kanisius said.
Meanwhile the other nine, namely Aceh, Bangka Belitung, Riau Islands, Jambi, Central Kalimantan, Central Sulawesi, North Sulawesi, Central Java and West Java, have moderate malaria endemic status.
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Editor: Bambang
Copyright © ANTARA 2011
