JAKARTA - Epidemiologist from the University of Indonesia, Pandu Riono, said that the government should not only pay attention to handling COVID-19 at referral hospitals that treat patients infected with the corona virus.
The government, according to him, is also paying attention to improving the handling of COVID-19 at community health centers (puskesmas). This is because the initial tracking of COVID-19 cases was carried out at the health center.
"During the pandemic, we continue to talk about hospitals. In fact, primary care at puskesmas is the front line in the response to health services," said Pandu in a virtual discussion on Katadata YouTube, Thursday, September 3.
"They (puskesmas) carry out tracing (case tracing), health promotion, and are closest to the community. But, we forget that," he continued.
Therefore, in addition to increasing the capacity of isolation care beds and ICU rooms at the COVID-19 referral hospital, the government was asked to increase the capacity and quality of case tracking at puskesmas.
"Puskesmas can identify people at risk. Puskesmas are the front guard that needs to be strengthened. Not only hospitals. Puskesmas must be upgraded for handling testing, tracking cases and isolating," said Pandu.
According to Pandu, Indonesia's condition has not improved after six months of being attacked by the COVID-19 outbreak. This is because, based on data held by the COVID-19 Handling Task Force, Indonesia has only been able to carry out examination of 125,434 specimens per week.
Meanwhile, the World Health Organization (WHO) is targeting Indonesia to screen 267,700 people per week. With a calculation, the standard examination is 1 person per 1000 population per week.
In the next six months, the government is expected to strengthen health services, surveillance or analysis of COVID-19 data, along with the implementation of health protocols that are typed by the public.
"With this combination we can reduce transmission. Do not despair because Indonesia is said to be an insecure country. It is not safe, but in the next 6 months we can change it with our common determination, by correcting our mistakes that did not strengthen surveillance and forgetting primary services," explained Pandu.
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