Hospitals treated me like a criminal: Activist

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.