Minister Of Health Budi Chats With The Commander Of The TNI And Minister Of Home Affairs Tito: Discussing Babinsa As A COVID-19 Tracker

Minister of Health Budi Gunadi Sadikin. (Photo: Doc. Ministry of Health)

JAKARTA - The Ministry of Health is exploring ways to improve contact tracing for the spread of COVID-19. Health Minister Budi Gunadi Sadikin opened the option of the possibility of involving the Village Guidance Officer (Babinsa) and Bhayangkara Community Security and Order (Bhabinkamtibmas) as contact tracing officers.

Furthermore, Budi said, the contact tracing strategy for the spread of the virus in the country must be improved. Referring to the World Health Organization (WHO) reference, there must be at least 30 contact tracers per 100,000 population.

Then, said Budi, the second reference is that every time one person is positive for COVID-19, tracing must be carried out on 30 people who have close contact within a maximum of one week. However, Indonesia is still very far away from tracking it. So, he calculated, to trace Indonesia's population, 80 thousand tracers were needed.

Therefore, Budi opened the opportunity to involve Babinsa and Bhabinkamtibmas in contact tracing. Budi claimed to have communicated with the Commander of the Indonesian National Army (TNI) Marshal Hadi Tjahjanto and Minister of Home Affairs Tito Karnavian.

"I have spoken, the commander has 30 thousand Babinsa that we can access. We (also) have spoken with Pak Tito and told me that the National Police has 60 thousand Bhabinkamtibmas in all villages," he said, during a working meeting with Commission IX DPR, Tuesday, 12 January.

Not only that, said Budi, Tito also said there were around 1 million guards or Community Protection (Linmas). According to him, they can be taught how to do tracing on people who have had close contact with positive patients with COVID-19.

"So if someone is hit, we can ask for Babinsa or Bhabinkamtibmas or Linmas because they are all over Indonesia, to be able to do tracing, at least 30 close contacts the person has met within a week," he said.

Budi explained that people who were met during the contact tracing would then be referred to undergo antigen swabs at the Puskesmas. In the future, Puskesmas will be able to carry out antigen swabs so that COVID-19 surveillance can run more optimally.