Prodita Sabarini, THE JAKARTA POST, JAKARTA | Sat, 02/14/2009 2:05 PM
The sight of them is deemed repugnant, and they can make a grown person wince or turn hysterical. But, no one in this metropolitan capital of Indonesia can escape living side by side with these rodents. Rats!
Either one notices or one does not; black rats are a part of daily life in Jakarta.
The lucky ones see only glimpses of rats running the city’s open gutters or crossing the streets, or the occasional flattened corpse in the middle of the road. The less fortunate have to deal with rats scourging for leftover food in their kitchens at night.
Wild and humongous, even a spoiled house cat can be intimidated by black rats.
With the rainy season, the rodents are becoming more than an unpleasant sight.
The Jakarta Health Agency has warned residents to brace for a number of water-borne diseases, including those spread by water contaminated by rats’ urine.
Already, two Jakartans have contracted Leptospirosis. They are currently being treated at Tarakan Hospital.
With the high population of rats in the city combined with the wet season and the city’s bad sewerage system leaving parts of the city flooded after heavy rains, residents are at risk of the deadly disease.
The bacteria can stay alive in water for up to a month and can easily enter the body through open wounds, eyes, nose and skin.
The incubation period in humans ranges between four to 19 days, with symptoms including fever, headache, fatigue, vomiting, sore eyes, leg pain and back pain.
The bacteria can trigger sudden death if it enters the heart. It can also attack the liver, turning a patients’ skin yellow, and lungs, causing a patient to cough up blood and experience chest pains.
Head of the health agency Tini Suryanti said residents should visit the local health center if they experience the symptoms.
“Residents should also avoid walking barefoot in puddles of water,” she said.
In 2002, during one of the largest floods in Jakarta, 113 patients were infected with leptospira germs according to the agency’s data. Twenty of the patients died.
Tini said there were 184 cases in 2007 and 41 in 2008.
Tini said her office did not have a rat population control agenda.
“Who is actually responsible for that?” she asked.
During the big flood of 2002, a joint team from the Jakarta Health Agency and the Health Ministry implemented a rat population control program.
Tini said that in 2002, the city experienced a big break out of Leptospirosis due to the flooding, while this year the threat was not as big.
Mammal expert Ken Aplin from Australia’s Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) said in an email that to protect a city from diseases carried by rats, the only possible measures were to reduce rat populations, to protect drinking water sources from contamination and to tell people to avoid walking barefoot in water, especially in still pools in areas where many rats live.
He said population control should be a preventive measure rather than a responsive measure because rats breed quickly.
A female rat gives birth after a three-week pregnancy, and can fall pregnant again one day after birth. Weaning only takes three weeks as well, so the next litter can be born straight after weaning, although a longer gap in birth of litters is more usual.
A new generation of rats is able to start breeding at around four months of age, Aplin said.
Aplin studied the DNA of black rats and found six different lineages, each one coming from different areas in Asia.
The study raises the possibility that the different lineages of black rats carry a different set of diseases.
“Two of the black rat lineages are known from Jakarta, one might be native to Java and other parts of western Indonesia. The other probably came from Thailand or southern China hundreds or even thousands of years ago,” he said.
Both probably carry leptospirosis, but we do not know which carry particular types of leptospire.”
From his study, the six lineages appeared in India, Taiwan, the Himalayas, Thailand, the Mekong Delta and Indonesia.
The Indian black rats spread to the Middle East around 20,000 years ago, and from this area they spread to Europe.
Human voyages during recent centuries transported this rat to Africa, the Americas and Australia. The Taiwanese breed moved to Japan, the Philippines and Indonesia, reaching Micronesia 3,500 years ago. The other 4 lineages are not so widespread.
He said trapping and poisoning were not effective methods at controlling rat populations because of rapid breeding and the fact that black rats were wary and difficult to kill using these methods.
“Rat populations can be limited by denying them access to food – by keeping areas clean of spilled grain, waste food etc. – and access to shelter.”
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