Hospitals treated me like a criminal: Activist
The Jakarta Post, Jakarta
The government may claim the criticism of its efforts to tackle Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) is excessive, but an activist has personally discovered that all is far from well in our hospitals.
Nurul Qoiriah, a program officer for a Hong Kong-based Indonesian migrant workers organization, shared her experiences of being a suspected SARS sufferer with the press recently.
"They treated me like I was a criminal," said Nurul, referring to the doctors and other healthcare workers whom she came into contact with.
Last week, she suddenly felt ill six days after arriving home from Hong Kong. She immediately went to the Persahabatan Hospital in East Jakarta, which has been designated by the government as the second SARS treatment hospital in Jakarta after the Sulianti Saroso Infectious Diseases Hospital (RSPI) in North Jakarta.
Upon learning that she had just come back from Hong Kong, where SARS had claimed several lives at that time, the Persahabatan Hospital nurses and the doctor who were attending her went into a panic, Nurul recalled.
Later, the doctor told her to take a chest X-ray to ascertain whether she had SARS or not. She had to pay about Rp 150,000 (about US$16) for the treatment she received.
"At the beginning, they did not try to find out what was really wrong with me. They just treated me as if I had SARS," she said, while showing her bill from the Persahabatan Hospital to reporters.
When her chest X-ray showed no sign of pneumonia, the doctor allowed her to go home after checking her throat and giving her some medicine.
The next day, she developed a high fever. A friend took her to the St. Carolus Hospital in Central Jakarta.
Once again, the nurses appeared to panic upon learning that she had just arrived back from Hong Kong.
"I was almost unconscious due to the fever. But vaguely I could hear them screaming after they checked my temperature: 'Thirty nine degrees!'," she recounted.
One of the SARS symptoms is a temperature of over 38 degrees Celsius.
The hospital suggested that she go to the RSPI. But instead, Nurul went to the nearby Cipto Mangunkusumo Hospital (RSCM).
"At that time I knew I didn't have SARS as I had a sore throat, not the SARS symptoms. Besides, I already had a checkup with a specialist in Hong Kong before I returned to Indonesia, and he said I was OK," Nurul said.
In the RSCM, her friend had to argue with a doctor for about an hour to convince him that Nurul had a sore throat, not SARS symptoms.
Finally, the doctor examined her and found she was suffering from a throat infection. He then gave her some antibiotics.
"I consider myself educated, someone who can speak for herself. Yet, these nurses and doctors treated me like a criminal. You can just imagine what would happen to a migrant worker in such a situation," she said.
A public relations officer at the Persahabatan Hospital, who requested anonymity, said that based on hospital policy, patients who needed a SARS test, except for the indigent, had to pay for it.
Meanwhile, a spokesperson for the St Carolus Hospital, Endang Suryatna, said that according to the standard operating procedures issued by the Jakarta Health Agency, patients with SARS symptoms who had just arrived from affected areas had to be transferred to a designated hospital.