Soeharto says health increasingly neglected
JAKARTA (JP): President Soeharto said yesterday various new diseases are plaguing the community because lifestyle changes have led people to neglect their health.
"The success of national development has brought behavioral changes, some of which are detrimental to health," Soeharto told health experts attending the opening of the fourth congress of the Indonesian Heart Foundation yesterday at the State Palace.
"In the past, communicable diseases were the number one killer. They are gradually being replaced by degenerative diseases such as heart ailments, stroke and cancer," he said.
He noted that people's wish to work and achieve, often to the extent of neglecting relaxation time, may lead to such degenerative diseases.
"Perpetual tension and restlessness may contribute to heart diseases," he said. "People should realize that treatment for heart and coronary heart diseases are expensive, and often not affordable for people in the low income bracket."
Accompanied by Minister of Health Sujudi and Coordinating Minister for People's Welfare Azwar Anas, Soeharto identified poor eating habit as another cause for the new diseases.
He said the government will continue efforts to enable local hospitals to provide the necessary treatment. "These efforts, however, will be useless if people don't take preventive measures," he said.
He pointed out that business people could help by introducing healthy working environments. Privately-run hospitals and clinics, whose number grows steadily, and the mass media should also help educate the public about healthy lifestyles.
The foundation's chairperson, L.A. Hanafiah, said the three- day congress has attracted 200 health experts as well as representatives of the foundation's branches from across the country.
Experts on heart disease have been concerned about the increasingly frequent occurrence of such conditions. Many have linked this trend with growing "coronary-prone behavior", a lifestyle centered in consumerism, stiff competition, lack of exercise and over-consumption of fatty foods, usually identified with industrialized societies.
One of Indonesia's prominent experts, Dr. Lily Ismudiati Rilantono, however, contends that coronary heart diseases, popularly believed to be a "rich man's affliction", are a major health problem for the poor as well.
She argued in 1994 that the poor are more prone to heart problems than the rich. Certain prenatal and post-natal conditions, related to the poor diet of pregnant women, increase risks of heart diseases and strokes.
Some studies, including several conducted in England, include people from lower social-economic groups and low birth-weight infants in the high-risk category. Calls have been made for the medical profession to study the correlation between the risk of heart disease and retarded fetal growth and placenta condition.
The Ministry of Health's 1992 Household Health Survey shows that cardiovascular diseases are now nation's number one killers and cause 15 percent of deaths nationwide.
A similar survey in 1986 ranked the disease third, below diarrhea and acute lower respiratory tract infections with a figure of slightly below 10 percent. In 1972 it was the eleventh most common cause of death in Indonesia.
Rilantono said the speed with which the prevalence of the disease increases is excessively high for a country which has not achieved a stage of development similar to industrialized countries. (swe)