'Epidemic laws must not violate human rights'

'Epidemic laws must not violate human rights'

Moch. N. Kurniawan, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

An activist warned the government on Friday against abusing
the rights of patients or suspected patients of Severe Acute
Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) following the enforcement of the
epidemic law to contain the disease.

The Law No. 4/1984 gives the government the authority to carry
out necessary measures in the handling of SARS patients or
suspected patients.

Human Rights Activist Daniel Pandjaitan of the Legal Aid
Institute said the government must ensure that measures against
SARS would not sacrifice human rights of people who may be
suffering from the mysterious flu-like illness.

"The government must first of all inform a person allegedly
infected with SARS about his or her diagnosis, and allow him or
her to get a second opinion from his or her personal doctor," he
said.

If the person is declared a SARS patient and isolated, the
government must allow him or her to be visited by his/her family,
doctor and lawyer, he added.

The government must provide compensation for SARS patients
during their quarantine period.

"Without those treatments, the government will certainly
violate human rights of persons allegedly infected with SARS. The
latter can sue the government," he said.

But he agreed that if a person who was declared a SARS patient
refused to be quarantined, the government could isolate the
person by force.

Article 4 of the 1984 law stipulates that measures to tackle
epidemic disease include investigation, medical checkup,
treatment, isolation and quarantine, prevention and vaccination,
destroying sources of the disease, treatment of corpses and
distribution of information to the public.

Article 10 stipulates that the government is responsible to
conduct measures to tackle epidemic diseases.

The law also requires people to report any suspected patient
who shows symptoms of the epidemic to nearest village head or
health clinic as stipulated in article 11.

In addition anyone who suffers from the measures to control an
epidemic has the right to compensation, which is further ruled in
a government regulation, the law says.

The Ministry of Health has repeatedly said the implementation
of the epidemic law was needed to provide a legal basis for the
government's efforts to fight SARS.

"We need to protect people from the danger of SARS,"
Indriyono, Director General for Epidemiology Surveillance,
Immunization and Health at the Ministry of Health said on Friday.

So far, around 80 people have died worldwide due to SARS and
over 2,300 people have been infected with the ailment.

Minister of Health Achmad Sujudi issued on Thursday a
Ministerial Decree No. 424/2003 which declares SARS a national
epidemic threat, thus automatically enforcing the epidemic law.

The epidemic law, according to Indriyono, was issued in 1984
to allow the government to take necessary measures against
epidemic diseases such as cholera and pests that were rampant at
that time.

The law was enacted also to meet any changes in the government
administration structure, such as the establishment of health
clinics.

The law also allows the minister to decide that a disease is
an epidemic and smooth the way for the imposition of the law on a
new epidemic disease, which was perhaps not named in the previous
epidemic Law No. 6/1962.

Indriyono promised that the government would not enforce the
epidemic law arbitrarily.

"We'll decide persons as SARS patients, suspected or observed
patients based on symptoms they display," he said.

"We'll temporarily isolate persons returning from SARS-prone
countries like Singapore, Hong Kong, China and Vietnam, who have
fever over 38 Celsius (100.4 Fahrenheit) and who have difficulty
breathing and a severe cough."