More training needed for city hospitals

Prodita Sabarini, The Jakarta Post, JAKARTA | Mon, 04/06/2009 12:02 PM

Hospitals in Jakarta are well-prepared in case of emergencies, a Health Ministry official says, but a member of the Public Health Scholars Association said more training needs to be done.

Health Ministry crisis center chief Rustam Pakaya said Thursday doctors and paramedics in 120 Jakarta hospitals were ready for emergencies such as earthquakes and floodings. Hospital buildings were designed to be tremor proof.

For Kemal Siregar, member of the Public Health Scholars Association, hospitals in the capital were better prepared than those in other cities or regencies.

“We still have to do a lot of preparation work. We have to rehearse emergency scenarios. Staff need to be trained how to treat people during disasters. The biggest weakness [of the hospital system] is the lack of coordination. There has to be training across all sectors of the medical profession, from medics and paramedics with the crisis center,” Kemal Said.

He said ambulances were part of the health infrastructure.

“Ambulances should be equipped with skilled personnel, not just drivers. Most of the time, ambulance personnel are only trained to transport a victim. They don’t know how to give first aid or save lives,” Kemal said.

Hospitals’ emergency preparedness is the highlight of World Health Day, which falls on April 7. The World Health Organization’s (WHO) theme for this year’s celebration is ‘Save lives, make hospitals safe in emergencies’. World Health Day 2009 focuses on the resilience and safety of health facilities and the health workers who treat those affected by emergencies.

WHO Director General Margaret Chan said - in a statement about World Health Day - the tragedy of a major emergency or disaster was compounded when health facilities failed.

“When a hospital collapses or its functions are disrupted, lives that depend on emergency care can be lost. Interruptions in routine services can also be deadly,” she said.

The United Nations’ International Strategy for Disaster Reduction (UNISDR) reported Asia was home to nine of the world’s top 10 countries for disaster-related deaths. In 2008, 321 natural disasters killed 235,816 people. Along with other weather-related events, floods remained one of the most frequent disasters last year, according to the UNISDR.

Greater Jakarta witnessed a deadly disaster last week, where at least 100 people were killed and hundreds of houses destroyed, after the collapse of the Situ Gintung lake wall.

The Fatmawati Hospital handled most of the disaster’s victims, treating 16 of the 30 victims sent to hospitals. The Fatmawati Hospital director of medics and nursing could not be reached for comment.

The head of the Jakarta Health Agency, Dien Emawati, said the hospitals’ response to the Situ Gintung disaster was adequate.

According to Rustam, doctors and paramedics in Jakarta were prepared for emergency situations.

“Members of the public are the ones who need to be trained for disaster mitigation,” he said.

Thousands of kids trapped in sex industry

Indah Setiawati and Alit Kertaraharja, THE JAKARTA POST, DENPASAR | Thu, 03/19/2009 10:08 AM

An estimated 60,000 children in Southeast Asia are being exploited to work in a multimillion dollar of commercial sexual businesses, a reality that also occurs in many other countries, a seminar was told Wednesday.

“The number of falling victims of the sexual abuse is on increase. It is affecting every country, not only in the Southeast Asia,” said Frans van Dijk, the regional director of Terre des Hommes Netherlands, a Dutch aid body focusing on children.

He was giving a welcoming speech in the three-day Southeast Asia Conference on Child Sex Tourism held in Sanur Paradise Hotel.

Van Dijk encouraged the governments to take the issue more seriously because he considered that the current law enforcement toward such a case as very weak.

However, he underlined that the law enforcement was not the only solution against cases of abusing the minors because it did not address the causes.

He said that because the core problem laid on poverty and lack of education, all elements in the society should put sufficient efforts to raise the awareness in the communities, empower people to protect the minors and establish a safety network for children.

Another speaker, Irwanto, the president of the National Coalition for the Elimination of Commercial Sexual Exploitation, said the law enforcement in the country was weak because the officers were often hesitant to arrest a perpetrator because it would make a family lost their basic income.

He said Indonesia needed to immediately ratify the United Nations Optional Protocol on Children in Armed Conflicts and the Optional Protocol on the Sale of Children, Child Prostitution and Child Pornography. Indonesia has signed both protocols in 2001.

Marco Scarpati, the president of Italy chapter of End Child Prostitution, Child Pornography and Trafficking of Children for Sexual Purposes (ECPAT), said the rapid growth of information and telecommunication technology, especially the internet, played a major role in exacerbating the phenomenon of the child sex tourism.

Pharmaceutical industry still growing, but at slower pace

Benget Besalicto Tnb., The Jakarta Post, JAKARTA | Mon, 04/06/2009 11:36 AM

Despite the worsening global financial crisis, Indonesia’s pharmaceutical industry is still raking in hefty gains this year, but at a slower pace, the Indonesian Pharmaceutical Association (GP Farmasi) said recently.

The industry’s growth is estimated to slow to 9 percent this year from the usual level of more than 12 percent annually, said GP Farmasi deputy chairman Syamsul Arifin.

He added the industry’s revenue would top around Rp 30 trillion (US$2.6 billion) this year

from Rp 28 trillion last year and Rp 25 trillion in 2007.

The sluggish growth is being blamed on the soaring costs of drugs, which are fast becoming unaffordable because of an increase in import costs of raw material as the rupiah continues its decline against the US dollar.

“All the manufacturers have to import their raw material, making them vulnerable to the rising exchange rate of the US dollar that raises their production costs. As long as it is still below Rp 12,000 to the dollar, we can still survive,” Syamsul said.

GP Farmasi chairman Anthony Charles Sunarjo forecast production costs would rise by about 10 percent.

“With such uncertainty, we can’t target high profits. But we have to work hard to improve our efficiency so that we can grow well this year. Otherwise, we may suffer a loss,” he said.

According to the association, 95 percent of products from pharmaceutical companies are sold in the domestic market, while only about 5 percent are exported, mostly to Southeast Asian countries and Hong Kong.

“I think that of all about 200 pharmaceutical companies, only the big 40 will make a profit this year, while the others will possibly sustain losses due to the currency slide and rising production costs,” Syamsul said.

Of the 200 companies, about 162 are local, while the other 38 are foreign-based, according to GP Farmasi.

Syamsul said locally owned pharmaceutical manufacturers had a market share of 70 percent, while foreign ones had 30 percent.

Last year, the local firms booked an average growth of 15 percent in profit, while the foreign-based ones booked around 10 percent, according to the association.

Anthony said that as the economic crisis throttled purchasing power, many people would turn from using prescribed medicine to using non-prescribed ones, which were more affordable.

“During the crisis, fewer people will go to doctors and take prescribed medicine. Instead, they will turn to using non-prescribed ones sold at drugstores. It’s always been like that,” he said, adding about 60 percent of medicine was administered as prescribed, while 40 percent was non-prescribed.

However, he added, manufacturers already had some experience in facing hard times.

“The [late-1997 Asian financial] crisis was much worse than this one. But we survived the storm,

so we’re optimistic that this time we can also come out unscathed,” he said.

Anthony urged the government to encourage the development of the upstream pharmaceutical industry to produce raw material, which was expected to be cheaper than imported raw material.

By doing so, he went on, local companies would no longer rely on imports of raw material.

“The government can facilitate such development by reforming its investment regulations in the industry, and then protect it for at least five years, until it is able to compete with imported medicine,” he said.

115 Tulungagung residents fall ill after consuming meatballs

The Jakarta Post, Jakarta | Tue, 04/07/2009 3:45 PM

At least 115 residents of Kates village in Tulungagung, East Java, suffered food poisoning after consuming meatballs on Sunday, tempointeraktif.com reported on Tuesday.

Ninety three of the victims, most of whom were school children, had received treatment at Kauman public health center, while 20 others were taken to Dr Iskak regional hospital. Another two had been taken to an Islamic hospital.

The incident was described as "abnormal" by Bahrudin, the head of the local Infectious Disease Prevention and Alleviation Agency (KLB).

Particularly since many snacks are being sold without supervision or even a permit to trade, Bahrudin said.

"From now on, we will educate food vendors about proper food hygiene," he said.

Police have detained a meatball seller named Agus for questioning. (amr)

Singapore sends autopsy report to David’s family

The Jakarta Post, JAKARTA | Sat, 04/04/2009 11:48 AM

Singapore’s Nanyang Technology University (NTU) has finally sent the autopsy report of David Hartanto Widjaja, an Indonesian student who died on its campus last month, to his family.

“We have received a scanned copy of the report by e-mail,” William Hartanto, David’s older brother, told The Jakarta Post on Friday by telephone.

He added that at first the university had offered to send the report by a courier service.

“The report mostly contained medical terms. Thus, we will seek professional help to decipher them,” William said, refusing to divulge the contents of the report.

Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesman Teguh Wardoyo said his office received no notification regarding the report.

“It was Singapore’s initiative to send it directly to the family and we cannot object to that,” he said.

On March 3, 2008, David was found dead after plunging from the third floor of a building on the NTU campus.

Singaporean authorities believe that the young man slashed his wrist and jumped to his death after stabbing a professor.

However, his family has refused to believe this story, saying that David was not the kind of person who would act violently towards another person or himself.

“There were no eyewitnesses who saw my brother stab the professor or jump from the third floor. The reports were all based on the professor’s own words,” William said earlier this week.

He added that when he flew to Singapore to claim the body, he saw no indication that his brother had tried to slash his wrist.

“There was no blood flowing from his hands or arms, but there was some on his backside and legs, so why did they say he slashed his wrists?” he said.

William says that Singaporean authorities made it difficult for the family, who flew to Singapore a day after the incident, to see David’s body.

“The scene was immediately cleared and we were not allowed to see the body of David right away,” he said.

Two other deaths on the NTU campus came soon after David’s. Zhou Zheng, a 24-year old researcher at the university’s laboratory was found hanging, dead, in an apartment on the campus.

Not long after, 29 year-old Hu Kunlun, another researcher, was hit by a car on his way to the campus. Both researchers were Chinese citizens.

The incident has caused a stir among Indonesians, with conspiracy theories being circulated and talk of revolutionary technology being invented by the 21-year old David.

Blogger Iwan Piliang has suggested that the confiscation of David’s computer and cellular phone by the Singaporean police proves that David’s thesis, which involved three-dimensional face recognition technology, was of high economic value.

“There may have been people with vested interests behind David’s death because of his research findings,” he told journalists earlier this week.

Yayan Mulyana, spokesperson for the Indonesian Embassy in Singapore, said that the embassy was yet to receive the autopsy report.

“We will ensure that the investigation is well conducted and that David’s family will obtain justice in this case,” he said. (dis)

It is feared bird flu could become more frightening

M. Azis Tunny, THE JAKARTA POST, RANTEPAO, TORAJA | Sat, 04/04/2009 10:21 AM

There is a need to raise awareness of bird flu because of a real threat: It could turn into something much more frightening than the H5N1 virus.

The frightening thing would be if the virus caused a pandemic if and when it became able to spread among humans, Coordinator of Surveillance and Monitoring at the National Commission on Bird Flu Control and Awareness on Influenza Pandemic (Komnas FBPI) Heru Setijanto said Friday.

Setijanto said Indonesia was currently ranked highest in the world in the number of deaths from bird flu, and was unprepared as to how to deal with a pandemic.

“The incubation period of the virus is very fast and deadly when contracted by humans. We are

not ready to face a pandemic if the situation arises,” Setijanto told The Jakarta Post on the sidelines of a national seminar on a Bird Flu Pandemic Response Simulation in Toraja, South Sulawesi.

He said Indonesia was ill-equipped to face the bird flu pandemic because training was only provided so far to personnel at government ministries and agencies.

“When it turns into a pandemic, it becomes a multi-sector problem and would involve every sector. We are unprepared as of now, especially for other sectors to [cope with] the epidemic,” he said.

According to Setijanto, the bird flu virus will always mutate and this is a cause for grave concern.

When contracted by humans, the incubation period of the H5N1 virus could cause death rapidly, in as little as five days.

Indonesia so far remains on top of the world chart with the highest number of deaths from H5N1.

Data at the Health Ministry showed 121 of the 145 patients diagnosed as infected with the virus had died, a very high fatality rate.

He added a bird flu pandemic could claim many lives and that 30 percent of the world’s population could be at risk.

In Indonesia, said Setijanto, a bird flu epidemic from the H1N1 virus once took place in Toraja. The disease, then termed a mysterious breathing disease, reportedly claimed 210,000 lives.

Head of the Makassar office of the United Nations International Childrens’ Education Fund (UNICEF) Purwanta Iskandar told the Post that bird flu should not be taken lightly.

The disease has been recorded over the past 100 years and has claimed millions of lives throughout the world, including in Indonesia. For example, in Toraja in 1918, about 10 percent of the local population reportedly died from lung disease.

“Experts have said that it is highly likely that we will experience it again in the near future, although the exact time remains unclear. Our assumption is that a pandemic is very likely to infect 30 percent of the population,” said Purwanta.

In the framework of preparing in anticipation of a pandemic, Komnas FBPI has worked together with UNICEF, the Canadian government and the South Sulawesi provincial administration to help organize the national seminar on a Bird Flu Pandemic Response Simulation in Toraja from April 1 to April 4.

One of a kind

The Jakarta Post | Thu, 04/02/2009 11:04 AM

A man rides a modified motorcycle Wednesday near the Hotel Indonesia traffic circle in Central Jakarta. The bike has been customized to accomodate a wheelchair at the back. (JP/J. Adiguna)