Government Suggested Paying Attention To Telemedicine For Vulnerable Groups

Illustration/Antara

JAKARTA - Griffith University Australian Epidemiologist Dicky Budiman asked the government to pay more attention to telemedicine that can be accessed by people who belong to vulnerable groups.

“Before making a choice, such as isolation or self-quarantine, there must be a risk assessment. It could not be from the technical place, all kinds of support, and whether there is someone who can be consulted also from the clinical side. There needs to be health workers and telemedicine," said Dicky in a voice message received by Antara, in Jakarta, Wednesday, February 16.

Responding to the large number of people who have mild or no symptoms due to Omicron, Dicky said the government should pay more attention to the use of telemedicine, especially for vulnerable groups such as the elderly and comorbid sufferers.

Monitoring needs to be carried out even before someone uses telemedicine, in order to avoid death when people are self-isolating in their respective homes.

Dicky admitted that he had received reports of finding cases of death in the cities of Malang and Palembang when people were self-isolating. According to him, this happened because the process of using telemedicine was not ready or carried out adequately.

Supposedly, he said, before using telemedicine, the public needed to get screened first through ascertaining whether there was a risk of other diseases or monitoring the feasibility of the residence to conduct isolation in accordance with the regulations issued. government or not.

"Even though they have been vaccinated twice, it has been more than seven months and they are elderly or have comorbidities, they must be careful," said Dicky.

Dicky emphasized that it would be better if the previous government provided a face-to-face physical examination to vulnerable groups such as the elderly who are 70 years and over and have uncontrollable comorbidities such as diabetes before being invited to use telemedicine.

But on the other hand, in improving monitoring as well as strengthening telemedicine, the government needs to ensure that internet access is running well, intensively provide education and literacy to the community as well as infrastructure development including improving the quality of human resources.

"When it comes to telemedicine, 15 years ago I spoke at the Ministry. Moreover, this is new, meaning that even if it is accelerated, it will take time. Because we haven't talked about internet access, we haven't talked about literacy and a lot of infrastructures, including human resources," he said.