Indonesia Prepares Four Strategies to Face Spread of Covid-19

Jakarta, MINA – The world of health in Indonesia has been rocked again by the emergence of Covid-19, especially in Jakarta. Even so, his party has prepared strategies to deal with various pandemics, one of which is Covid-19, according to the Indonesian Minister of Health, Budi Gunadi Sadikin.

Minister of Health said that the pandemic against the virus was the same as war. There are three types of war faced by humans so far.

“First, war with nature. Second, war between humans. “And the third war is facing pathogens or pandemics,” said Budi in his statement in Jakarta on Saturday.

Of all the wars humanity has faced, the war against pathogens accounts for the most deaths in the world. Budi gave the example of the Black Death pandemic which hit Europe, Asia and North Africa between 1347-1353 and is estimated to have claimed the lives of 200 million people.

To prepare for the war against the pandemic, the former Deputy Minister of BUMN said the first strategy that needs to be implemented is to prepare competent human resources.

“We need to prepare the people. Health reserve personnel, the same as the military. We also create digital health reserves. So we record digitally which of our people have experience in dealing with disasters, how and who they are. “And it can be called at any time,” he added.

The second strategy is to prepare the best weapons against the pandemic, such as equipping medical equipment.

“If shooting defense uses weapons, shooting health uses injections. “So if defense has a weapons factory, we (health) have a syringe factory, RnD (Research and Development), all kinds of things, right,” said Budi.

The next strategy to fight a potential pandemic is to increase supervision, such as setting up PCR labs in 416 districts and 98 cities throughout Indonesia. Meanwhile, the final strategy is to prepare ammunition for ultimate weapons such as recombinant DNA technology and others.

“The lab is health intelligence to see where the virus comes from. We also need a Genomic Sequencing Laboratory. “So if we already know our enemies who are causing hundreds of millions of people to die from animals, we will have prepared an Integrated One Health strategy,” concluded Budi.

As is known, the Covid-19 pandemic was first detected on March 2 2020. On April 9, the pandemic had spread to 34 provinces with DKI Jakarta, West Java and Central Java as the most exposed provinces.

The government has implemented various policies for handling the pandemic from various sectors such as Restrictions on Community Activities (PPKM), providing incentives for the community and actors, and providing vaccines so that the pandemic can be overcome and the economy is maintained.

The government’s steps to handle the pandemic have received appreciation from many parties. One of them is from the World Health Organization (WHO).

WHO Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus in June 2022 said Indonesia had handled COVID-19 well. Likewise with COVID-19 vaccination coverage.

Tedros conveyed this to President Jokowi at that time. Apart from WHO, praise came from Johns Hopkins University (JHU) which called Indonesia one of the best countries in suppressing infections caused by SARS-CoV-2. (T/RE1/P2)

Mi’raj News Agency (MINA)