Dengue

I was hospitalized due to dengue fever a couple of weeks back. I made it out in one piece, despite the fact it was my third time (two times in Jogja ten years ago). Was it me being extremely unlucky, or was there also neighborhood factor? Perhaps, I have been living in areas where historically dengue was common.

The parallel boxplot below shows the distribution of reported dengue cases in 2011 in several regencies/cities I have been to (or want to live in the future). The unit of analysis is village/kelurahan which I clustered at regency level: Denpasar, Badung (Bali), Yogya proper, Sleman, Bantul, Jaksel, Magelang, Klaten, and Salatiga.

Several points from the boxplot immediately obvious. First, with the exception of Denpasar, all regencies have median (and even 3rd quartile, save for Badung, Yogya, and Denpasar) of zero. Thus, half to 75% of villages/kelurahan in these regencies didn't report dengue cases. Salatiga is particularly impressive with zero cases in 2011.

And then, there are Denpasar and Yogya (where I mostly hang around these days and in the past--I lived in Gondokusuman when I contracted dengue first and second time). Cases reported in Denpasar are quite widespread in the villages (n=43 villages). The median is a little above 25, and the max is a little under 100. It means, half of the villages reported between 25 to 100 dengue cases. Jogja (n=45 villages) is less intense than Denpasar, but still at least a quarter of villages/kelurahan reported up to 25 cases.

So yes, me being extremely unlucky is one thing, a suspicious hood factor is another. Maybe I should move to Salatiga to be on the safer side.

Scatterplots below zoom in to neighborhood in both regencies where I should be vigilant at putting on mosquito repellent. The good news, villages reporting cases are generally close to the hospital.

 

NB: data from the old Podes, 2011.

Young and Educated Village Chiefs in Bali

An acquaintance had run for the office of village head/chief (perbekel in Bali) and won. Now, he has been serving for a few years and it appears he made a lot of wonderful innovation. Young and highly educated, a software programmer if I am not mistaken, he utilizes information technology in governing as well as promotes green sustainable practices.

How common is this phenomenon of young, highly educated village chiefs across Bali? Toying with BPS data, I found that he is quite unique. Defining young as less than 45 years old, and highly educated as at least having a college degree, the combination of the two variables at once is not common at regency level in Bali.

The scatter plot below maps regencies according to their ratios (in percentage) of highly educated chiefs (Y axis) and young chiefs (X axis). It demonstrates that its upper-right area is rather empty. The area is supposed to be where regencies with a high ratio of both young and educated chiefs are clustered (I define high ratio as surpassing 1:1 or more than 100%). 

Instead of seeing regencies with high ratios of both variables, we see regencies where one variable being dominant. Take Denpasar and Badung (at the upper-left side): two regencies which host highly educated chiefs with a ratio of more than 4 college graduates to 1 high school graduate. And yet, they are populated with fewer young chiefs with a ratio of 4 to 5. 

The case of Bangli is also interesting (the lower-right side). It has a lot of young chiefs with the ratio of 3 to 2 (157% to be exact) but very few college educated ones. The ratio is a little over 1:3 or 35.8%. Tabanan, the regency where this acquaintance resides, is typical of most regencies. It has less than 1:1 ratio of college educated chiefs compared to the high school graduates. It also still lacks young ones with the ratio of a little over 3:5 or 65.8%.

Buleleng, my hometown, is trailing at both. It has fewer highly educated and young chiefs compared to the rest (see that sad dot at the lower-left side).

NB: data from BPS, 2014.