Sulianti Saroso hospital alone in bird flu war

Abdul Khalik, The Jakarta Post

Tatang, 40, sighed with relief after his teenage daughter, Ade Puspita Rina, was admitted to the Sulianti Saroso Hospital in Sunter, North Jakarta.

"Where else can we find treatment for bird flu patients? Everybody tells me that if I want to save my daughter's life I have take her here," the visibly worried father told The Jakarta Post in front of the hospital's emergency unit last week.

Tatang, a resident of Jatinegara in East Jakarta, said that when Ade's body temperature reached 39 degrees Celsius, he rushed her to a nearby hospital but doctors there told him to take her to Sulianti Saroso.

"I believe that my daughter will be saved after being treated here. I have read and watched news about how the hospital handles many bird flu patients," he said.

Ade is just one of 153 suspected bird flu patients that the Sulianti Saroso Hospital, the only one in the country that is has the proper staff and equipment to treat bird flu patients in Indonesia, has treated since the first human case appeared last July.

Out of the 153, nine have been declared positive with bird flu, of which five have died. Thirty-seven more are still under observation and the other 109 proved not to have the avian influenza virus. Those others were treated and discharged.

Sulianti Saroso spokesman and bird flu surveillance head Ilham Patu said the hospital had the capacity to treat 44 bird flu patients at a time and 126 patients of other diseases, including HIV/AIDS and dengue.

Built on a three-hectares of land in 1992 with a grant from the Japanese government, the hospital, which only officially began operation in February 2005, plans to have at least 600 rooms to treat people with infectious diseases.

"We have been busy treating bird flu patients over the past several months. We are deploying two specialists every day in the emergency unit to take care of (possible) bird flu patients," Patu told the Post.

He said that although the hospital only had six equipment to treat bird flu patients, they could handle the current numbers.

"We, however, doubt if we can handle more patients, especially with a possible pandemic getting closer. We must have more equipment, specialists and rooms to treat patients," he said.

Health experts worry that avian flu cases will increase in the country as the rainy season kicks in, the normal time for influenza viruses to peak. If the virus mutates so it can pass between humans, the country could be at the center of a global pandemic.

Patu said many countries have expressed a commitment to help expand and modernize the hospital but it had so far relied solely on government funding.

The hospital was named after Prof. Dr. Julie Sulianti Saroso for her services in fighting infectious diseases during the struggle for independence against the Dutch.

Sulianti, who was born in 1917 on Bali, devoted her life to curing people with infectious diseases from Tambun in West Jakarta to Gresik in East Java. Besides directly treating patients, she is also known for her research to fight disease.

The hospital first became known to the public when it handled several cases of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) in 2003.

"We have proposed to the government that the hospital have a WHO-sanctioned laboratory so that we don't have to depend on a laboratory in Hong Kong to determine the status of a bird flu patient. I think it is critical in curbing the spread of bird flu," Patu said.

While bird flu has become endemic in many countries in Asia, the region has only one WHO-sanctioned laboratory.