RI needs more pediatric neurologists: Expert

JAKARTA (JP): Indonesia needs to train more pediatric neurologists up to the standard of foreign physicians who are expected to stream in during the coming free trade era, an expert said yesterday.

After a ceremony appointing him as a professor at the University of Indonesia's school of medicine, Taslim S. Soetomenggolo said Indonesia's education institutions had not set up the necessary structures to speed up the training of pediatric neurologists.

"If we let this continue, we'll end up as spectators (watching the flow of foreign experts into Indonesia)," said Taslim, who was a member of the team that separated the highly-publicized Riau Siamese twin in 1987.

Taslim is the University of Indonesia's 222nd professor and the eleventh inaugurated at the university this year.

He is head of the university's school of medicine child neurology subdivision

Taslim said Indonesia had produced only 13 child neurologists, three of whom had died.

Most experts were not originally trained as child neurologists but were senior pediatricians who later met the Indonesian Pediatrician Association's standards for child neurologists, he said.

They are called consultant pediatricians.

Taslim, 57, said he was ready to set up a special program for child neurology.

"The program will be geared to train pediatricians as well as neurologists. There should no longer be a question over whether neurologists or pediatricians will become better pediatric neurologists," he said.

The dean of the medical school, Ali Sulaiman, said "there should be cooperation among specialists. If you approach a health problem with a too narrow a perspective based on each expert's specialization, the cost of healthcare will be too great a burden (for patients)," he said.

Taslim said there were differences in the way children's brains and adults' brains had to be treated.

"Children's brains are not a miniature of an adult's brain. Children's brains grow and get bigger over time and is in the process of development from being an immature brain to mature brain," he said.

Neurological problems with adults usually cause a loss of skills already mastered.

Children's neurological problems may mean a child never learns basic skills like speaking.

Taslim said if a baby did not cry after birth, walk in 15 months or speak in two-and-a-half years, there was a big possibility the baby had a neurological problem.

The most common post-natal neurological problem is convulsion with a fever.

Taslim said between 2 percent and 5 percent of children under five years old were vulnerable to this.

Epilepsy is a common neurological disease affecting people of all ages. But Taslim said infants had to be treated differently from adults.

"Certain medicines used for adults can have negative side- effects when given to infants," he said.

The drug phenobarbital, which is harmless to adults, could cause hyperactivity and poor concentration in children, he said. (35)