Tourist paradise Bali suffering rabies epidemic
(AFP)

DENPASAR, Indonesia — The Indonesian government is to vaccinate all dogs on the holiday island of Bali to combat a raging rabies epidemic that has left 76 people dead over two years, an official said Friday.

Around 34,000 people have been bitten by dogs on the island, which is popular with western tourists, in the first seven months of this year alone, authorities said.

"We aim to vaccinate all dogs in Bali by the end of this year to curb the spread of rabies. We'll start to mass vaccinate the dogs in late September," Bali animal husbandry agency chief Putu Sumantra said.

"There are still hundreds of thousand of dogs that have not been vaccinated. About 200 teams will be deployed to work in 700 villages," he said.

Unlike the rest of mainly Muslim Indonesia, where people do not generally keep dogs, Bali is a predominantly Hindu island and dogs are common either as pets or strays.

Sumantra said that since 2008, about 300,000 dogs had been vaccinated. Tens of thousands of stray dogs had also been culled.

Bali health agency head Nyoman Sutedja said there were 34,000 cases of people being bitten by dogs in Bali this year compared to 28,000 dog bites in the whole of 2009.

"The rising cases of bites have made us worry. We need more anti-rabies vaccines for people here," Sutedja said.

The latest victim of rabies, a 43-year old Balinese woman, died on Tuesday.

Australia and the US have issued travel warnings to tourists about the prevalance of the disease.

Copyright © 2010 AFP. All rights reserved.

Groundswell of Support Growing for Move by Bali Governor to Outlaw Plastic Bags at Island's Supermarkets.

Supermarkets are being asked by Bali's Governor to urgently replace the use of plastic bags with paper or cloth carriers. Public support for this change has come from many sectors, including a recent gathering of several environmental groups held at the Hypermarket Mall Bali at the Galleria Kuta.

Quoted in Radar Bali, Tuyun Ismawati of Bali Fokus, spoke at the gathering, saying, "beyond issues of aesthetics and health, plastic waste destroys the natural environment."

The amount of plastic waste generated by Bali is of genuine concern. Of the estimated 5,000 tons of waste produced by the island's population every day, some 15% is in the form of plastic waste. In the aggregate, this equals between 600 – 750 tons of plastic waste every day. To help you visualize, imagine 167 large trucks of plastic waste being produced every day of the year.

Four public groups in Bali - Bali Fokus, Beautiful Bali without Plastic (Bali Cantik Tanpa Plastik), Yayasan Gus and EcoBali - have joined efforts to invite the public to be aware of the threat posed by the mounting piles of plastic waste via the presentation of education films, conducting informative quizzes, circulating petitions, and essay competitions to support governor Pastika's call for a ban in the use of plastic bags.

These four organizations are unified in their call for a ban on plastic waste. The group depicts the use of plastic as a symptom of the instant gratification of modern society with little concern for the environmental implications of this life style. Moreover, because plastic bags are made from fossil fuels, they also represent a wasteful use of a diminishing natural resources.

According to Alex Ryan of Bali Cantik Tanpa Plastik, every day a large supermarket distributes thousands of plastic bags to its customers. Given away free-of-charge, these bags are used for only 5-15 minutes, discarded and then become part of the earth's environment in the form of waste for 500-1,000 years into the future. Many of these bags end up on Bali's beaches, damaging the reputation of the island's international image.

Alex welcomed news that the Governor was preparing a regulation that would soon compel supermarkets to abandon the use of plastic bags.

In anticipation and in sympathy for the new rules, many supermarkets in Bali have begun selling cloth bags and cardboard boxes to their customers. Dijon - a food shop at Simpang Siur has for several years offered cash discounts to customers who bring cloth bags to carry home their purchases.


© Bali Discovery Tours.