Health minister asked to give higher care on Ponari`s practices

Semarang (ANTARA News) - Health Minister was expected to give higher care on the welfare of the people especially in the field of health following the death of another patient of Ponari, a small boy healer from Jombang, on Sunday.

Coordinator of the Women and Children Care Network (JPPA) of Central Java chapter Prof Agnes Widanti S here on Monday said with the death of another Ponari`s patient, the health minister should immediately take a follow up step to prevent such similar incident from recurrence in the future.

"Just let this incident come up as a lesson in order to avoid such similar incident from happening in the future," she said.

However, she reminded that so far the condition of people`s health was really poor. Practically such similar incident tend to happen in the future.

As a matter of fact, the government especially the health minister should be responsive to this problem and take a follow up step to improve the condition of the people`s health.

After learning Ponari`s case, Agnes further stressed the community preferred more to choose a small boy to heal their diseases more than medical doctors.

"The reason why they prefer to meet Ponari is due the fact that consultation cost to the doctor is much higher than that of healing service handled by Ponary," she said.

However, Agnes added, the government had taken various steps to improve the health of the people by providing generic medicines and public health guaranty.

Unfortunately, it turned out that the implementation of those efforts was not effective to improve public health, Agnes said.

Therefore, he reminded the government to continuously monitor and watch medical practices of Ponari in the sense that the healing practice should not hamper the process of Ponary`s progress as a child.

"Let alone, the right of a child to get education is not ignored. That is really lamentable," she said.