Already affected by poverty and malnutrition, Papua in eastern Indonesia faces a deadly measles epidemic. Experts urge the authorities to act, at the risk of seeing the epidemic repeat itself according to AFP.
About 800 children have fallen ill, and there are around 100 deaths, mainly among babies. The outbreak was first made public in early January. Indonesian President Joko Widodo sent military and medical teams to supply remote villages in the region with basic necessities and medicine.
Poorly redistributed wealth
“To prevent (the crises) from repeating themselves in the future, we must end the isolation,” Natalius Pigai, a former member of the National Commission for the Defense of Human Rights, told AFP. Indeed, some villages are only accessible by boat or by air. For example the commune of Ayam, in the district of Asmat, where about twenty children have been affected, is ten hours by boat from Timika, the nearest large town. Some parents were forced to travel to care for their sick child.
Papua has great natural resources, including one of the largest open-pit gold and copper mines in the world, operated by the American multinational Freeport McMoRan. It brings in 600 million dollars (482 million euros) in tax revenue, as Andreas Harsono of the NGO Human Rights Watch revealed to AFP.
The problem is that only a small part of that goes to the Papuans, whose life expectancy is the lowest in Indonesia. The authorities still have enormous progress to make in terms of infrastructure development, the fight against corruption, and poverty despite the President’s promises when he took office in 2014.
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