BPJS Ensures The Government Continues To Finance The Treatment Of COVID-19 Patients

JAKARTA - BPJS Kesehatan President Director Ali Ghufron Mukti ensured that the government would continue to finance treatment and handling due to the COVID-19 case that had risen again in Indonesia.

The reason is, the COVID-19 pandemic is a non-natural disaster, so the government will continue to finance it through BPJS Kesehatan.

"The role of BPJS Kesehatan in handling COVID-19 in the country is to support the government according to its capacity in the COVID-19 financing, prevention and treatment system," said Ghufron in a statement reported by ANTARA, Wednesday, May 3.

According to him, handling related public health such as the COVID-19 pandemic is a domain of the Ministry of Health. However, BPJS Kesehatan will continue to support according to its capacity in the COVID-19 financing and treatment system.

Moreover, continued Ghufron, until March 2023 the membership of BPJS Kesehatan has reached 91.58 percent or 252.17 million Indonesians. He argues that people do not need to panic to see the current trend of increasing COVID-19 cases, but they must remain vigilant with preventive efforts to be carried out.

"The claim to finance COVID-19 treatment has expired, which is two months after the patient is declared to have finished receiving services," he said.

Ghufron also reminded that currently the Tuberculosis case in Indonesia is also quite high, so it must be watched out for.

Meanwhile, Member of Commission IX of the House of Representatives Ratu Ngadu Bonu Wulla praised BPJS Health's better performance. He hopes that BPJS membership can be more active, so that BPJS' performance socialization needs to be carried out so that its participation continues to increase.

"Currently, the number of inactive BPJS Health participants is recorded at 30 million people," said Ratu.

He also encouraged the vaccination movement to be intensified so that community immunity can still prevent the transmission of COVID-19 in the country.

On the other hand, the Director of Postgraduates at YARSI University, Tjandra Yoga Aditama, revealed that the international community is currently optimistic that the COVID-19 endemic will arrive in January 2023. However, the emergence of a new variant of COVID-19 in a number of countries has hampered the process of getting to the endemic.

"The government can do whole genome sequuncing on COVID-19 cases to make it clearer in handling the new variants of COVID-19 at this time," said Tjandra.

He emphasized that steps to prevent the transmission of COVID-19 must be increased through public awareness to immediately check themselves if they have symptoms of COVID-19. Vulnerable groups and the elderly must be careful while still implementing health protocols and socializing booster vaccinations.

Because, according to him, the COVID-19 pandemic may end, but COVID-19 will not disappear. Thus, COVID-19 patients in the future are still there.

"Efforts to socialize related to preventing the transmission of COVID-19 and a healthy living culture must continue to be carried out. Prevention efforts, he added, must start from oneself," he said.