Mother Lereh was furious. She took a piece of wood and threw it at the monkeys in the bushes. The monkeys avoided it and hid.
The oldest woman in the Tumenggung Minan Group, who lives on the oil palm plantation in Rejo Sari Village, Pamenang District, Merangin Regency, Jambi, Indonesia, continues to curse.
The monkeys actively hunt for food during the day, when the Rimba people are working. The monkeys raid the sudong—the traditional huts of the Rimba people with tarpaulin roofs and wooden log floors—in search of food.
When the hut was abandoned by its owner, wild monkeys began to arrive and leave evidence of droppings and saliva inside the hut and on the cooking utensils.
Traces of wild monkey droppings and saliva have the potential to be zoonotic, or carry infectious diseases transmitted from animals to humans.
"Monkeys come to the hut looking for food. Their droppings often remain. Glasses, plates, and pots are licked, if there is still food left," said Induk Lereh to Kompas.com on June 23, 2024.
These dozens of monkeys are one group. They not only attack the houses of Rimba people, but often visit the settlements of residents in the village. The distance between the Rimba people's residence and the villagers is only a stone's throw.
In January 2023, Lereh said, joint health workers from the Indonesian Conservation Community (KKI) Warsi, the Merangin Health Office, and missionary doctors took sputum tests of the Rimba people. The results showed that 11 children tested positive for tuberculosis.
This sputum sampling was carried out after an 18-year-old child died due to drug-resistant tuberculosis in 2022.
"Death occurred because Orang Rimba did not know about tuberculosis," said Lereh.
The child who died of drug resistance was Nering's youngest child. The elderly man said that before his child died, he had a severe cough and coughed up blood.
The child had received treatment. However, when hunting in the forest, the medicine was not taken.
"We don't know the difference between a tuberculosis cough and a normal cough. My grandson also had a cough, he was taken to the health center. Now he's recovered," said Nering.
Nering admitted that he did not know that tuberculosis could be transmitted, and that the monkeys could carry tuberculosis.
He said, if there is a disease that is at risk of being transmitted, the Rimba people will implement the "besasandingon tradition."
In its implementation, sick people (cenenggo) will be separated from healthy people (bungaron) in different forest areas.
If they need to communicate, the cenenggo and bungaron will talk while maintaining a distance (sesulongon) of around 10 to 15 meters.
“If there is an infectious disease, we are very careful and keep our distance when talking, especially to outsiders," said Nering.
Potential transmission of tuberculosis from monkeys
Grace Wangge, a pharmacoepidemiology expert from Monash University Indonesia, explains there is indeed the potential for tuberculosis transmission between monkeys and humans.
However, she emphasized that monkey urine and feces are not a medium for transmitting tuberculosis.
Grace said that monkey saliva can transmit diseases to humans. However, it is not the saliva that sticks to objects, but the saliva that spreads in the air when the monkey sneezes or coughs.
In this condition, the bacteria that cause tuberculosis can survive for up to three to four months in the form of droplets in the air.
Grace said, in the journal Plos One, non-invasive specimen collections for Mycobacterium tuberculosis detection in free-ranging long-tailed macaques (Macaca fascicularis) found a case in Thailand of monkeys infected with tuberculosis. Cambodia, which is a country with a fairly large population of long-tailed monkeys in Southeast Asia, also found cases of tuberculosis in monkeys.
In the paper "A Systematic Literature the Impact of the Climate to the Case of Tuberculosis (TB): A Review (2021),"
Grace said that climate contributes to the density of air temperature vectors and seasonal climate is a factor causing tuberculosis.
“There is a significant correlation between climate impacts such as rainfall and temperature changes and the occurrence of tuberculosis,” Grace said.
Although long-tailed monkeys can be infected with tuberculosis and can transmit the infection, Grace said, comprehensive testing is needed for monkeys living close to the Orang Rimba community. The potential for transmission from monkeys does exist, but the transmission of tuberculosis to the community is more likely to come from villagers or outsiders who interact with the community.
The coordinator at Indonesia One Health University Network, Wiku Adisasmito, agrees. He said not to be hasty in saying that tuberculosis that infected the community came from long-tailed monkeys.
This story was produced with support from Internews' Earth Journalism Network. It was first published in Kompas on June 30, 2024. It has been lightly edited for length and clarity.
Banner image: A baby monkey is kept as a pet on the palm oil plantation in Rejosari Village, Pamenang District, Merangin Regency, Jambi / Credit: Suwandi for Kompas.
Suwandi
