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OUTBREAK ALERT: Indonesia To Mass Vaccinate In Order To Contain Diphtheria
OUTBREAK ALERT: Indonesia To Mass Vaccinate In Order To Contain Diphtheria
Indonesia is seeing an outbreak of diphtheria which is scaring civilians and government officials alike. The disease continues to spread as officials desperately work to contain the bacteria before it becomes a pandemic.
The bacteria that causes diphtheria ravages the human body. It causes a thick covering in the back of the throat and it has so far, infected hundreds in Indonesia. The disease is spreading quickly and not only to regions with limited health service but also to the country’s capital Jakarta, where health services are much better.
Between January and November 2017, the government has recorded 593 diphtheria cases, spread across 95 regencies in 20 provinces. The death toll has reached 32. The World Health Organization data on diphtheria shows that the number of cases in Indonesia has fluctuated since the 1980s. –Medical Xpress
Diphtheria is a life-threatening communicable disease that spreads through air containing Corynebacterium diphtheriae, which can lead to breathing difficulties, heart failure, paralysis, and even death if left untreated. The bacteria attacks the upper respiratory system, leading to symptoms such as high fever, sore throat, difficulties in swallowing, and shortness of breath. The bacteria can also spread through spits and coughs and contaminated objects. When they enter the body, they release toxins which spread through the blood and can cause damage to the body system, especially the heart and nervous system. These complications can lead to death.
Since diphtheria is caused by a bacteria, antibiotics are normally a simple and effective treatment if administered in time. But government officials are blaming the outbreak on an “anti-vaccination” movement growing in Indonesia, prompting the mass vaccination of children. Some eight million children and teenagers across the Southeast Asian nation will receive a vaccination in an attempt to prevent further spreading of the disease
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The American Empire: Murder Inc.
The American Empire: Murder Inc.
As Indonesia’s former President Suharto lay ill in 2008, a supporter displayed a portrait of him outside the Jakarta hospital where the military dictator died two weeks later. It was in Suharto’s brutal three-decade reign that Indonesia invaded East Timor, where investigative journalist Allan Nairn covered atrocities the general’s troops committed. (Vincent Thian / AP)
Terror, intimidation and violence are the glue that holds empire together. Aerial bombardment, drone and missile attacks, artillery and mortar strikes, targeted assassinations, massacres, the detention of tens of thousands, death squad killings, torture, wholesale surveillance, extraordinary renditions, curfews, propaganda, a loss of civil liberties and pliant political puppets are the grist of our wars and proxy wars.
Countries we seek to dominate, from Indonesia and Guatemala to Iraq and Afghanistan, are intimately familiar with these brutal mechanisms of control. But the reality of empire rarely reaches the American public. The few atrocities that come to light are dismissed as isolated aberrations. The public is assured what has been uncovered will be investigated and will not take place again. The goals of empire, we are told by a subservient media and our ruling elites, are virtuous and noble. And the vast killing machine grinds forward, feeding, as it has always done, the swollen bank accounts of defense contractors and corporations that exploit natural resources and cheap labor around the globe.
There are very few journalists who have covered empire with more courage, tenacity and integrity than Allan Nairn. For more than three decades, he has reported from Central America, East Timor, Palestine, South Africa, Haiti and Indonesia—where Indonesian soldiers fractured his skull and arrested him. His reporting on the Indonesian government massacres in East Timor saw him branded a “threat to national security” and officially banned from occupied East Timor.
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