Destitute dengue patients get bills paid
Damar Harsanto and Eva C. Komandjaja, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta
The yawning gap between the state emergency policy on dengue fever and its actual implementation is nowhere more evident than at hospitals where they have been reduced to giving the bare minimum medical treatment for impoverished patients.
Instead of the expected free medical treatment for all dengue fever patients, the Jakarta administration has only provided the facility to poor patients and/or those who are treated in the least expensive hospital wards.
Head of the Jakarta Health Agency, Abdul Chalik Masulili, calculated on Tuesday that the expenses for the free medical treatment provided at the 16 recommended hospitals across the capital would be around Rp 15 billion (US$1.76 million), which amounted to less than the allocated Rp 20 billion.
"We're ready to reimburse the hospitals... (But) the hospitals should first file their bills with us for reimbursement," he explained.
Jakarta Governor Sutiyoso asserted that the emergency funds had come from various sources: the Rp 20 billion would be taken from the social welfare fund for poor families, or Gakin, and the Rp 7.2 billion from the city budget.
But the city budget will only allocate money for the dengue eradication campaign, which includes fumigation.
Sutiyoso said his office had emergency funds from the central government as a back up, but he did not mention the amount.
The Ministry of Health said a total of Rp 150 billion is ready to help covering all costs needed to curb the dengue outbreak which has already hit 26 provinces since earlier this year.
Jakarta City Council has pushed the administration to use its Rp 800 billion reserve fund for the purpose, demanding the bypass of unnecessary bureaucracy to relieve the hospitals from the mounting operational costs.
The health agency spokeswoman Evy Zelvino told The Jakarta Post that the agency had prepared Rp 58 billion in funding for hospital claims and other assistance to the poor.
According to the agency, a patient who does not have a Gakin card, can get a subsidy or free medical care, depending on the hospital.
For example, the city-run Tarakan Hospital in West Jakarta said it would provide free treatment for patients from outside Jakarta, while the city-run Budhi Asih Hospital in East Jakarta said that it would only provide free treatment for Jakarta residents.
Meanwhile, Deputy Director of Services of the city-run Tarakan Hospital Sutirto Basuki said that his hospital was currently collecting the necessary paperwork for the claims process. Budhi Asih Hospital is undertaking a similar process.
Responding to most hospitals' concerns over the prolonged bureaucratic procedures for the reimbursement, Evy said that the agency would do its best to validate the claims as soon as possible so the hospitals could maintain their services to the public.
The agency has recorded, as of Tuesday morning, that the number of patients suffering dengue fever in the city limits has increased to 7,950 patients, with the death toll at 59.