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young father in South Jakarta has had to say a final goodbye to his newborn baby, who died over the weekend, after a number of hospitals he visited refused to admit his sick daughter.

Although he is still mourning, Eliyas Setia Nugroho, 20, of Pasar Minggu, South Jakarta, feels a degree of comfort after the second of his newborn twins, Dara Nur Anggraini, was admitted early on Monday to the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) at the Tarakan Hospital in Central Jakarta. The other twin, Dera Nur Anggraini, died on Saturday due to respiratory problems. Dera was only 4 days old.

“I am exhausted, but I’m glad that Dara is now being taken care of and is getting better. She has to gain more weight,” Eliyas, a street vendor, said at the hospital on Monday.

Dera and Dara were born weighing 1 kilogram and 1.4 kilograms, respectively, via cesarean section at the Zahira Hospital in South Jakarta on Monday last week. The twins were delivered a month prematurely when their mother, Lisa Darawati, 20, developed a fever and her cervix was 1-centimeter dilated.

Accompanied by his parents — Herman and Ketumbar — Eliyas recalled his family’s struggle to find a hospital that had NICU facilities for Dera. As a Jakarta resident, Eliyas should be entitled to free third-class health services at 88 city-owned, state-owned and private hospitals by showing a Jakarta Health Card (KJS) — a program initiated by Jakarta Governor Joko “Jokowi” Widodo — or his Jakarta ID card and his Jakarta family card.

“Dera had respiratory problems and needed surgery. The hospital staff recommended that we find a hospital with NICU facilities right away but they did not recommend a particular hospital,” Eliyas said.

With a recommendation letter from the Zahira Hospital, Eliyas and his father went to the city-owned Fatmawati Hospital in South Jakarta, where they were turned away because of a “lack of rooms”.

Eliyas and Herman later drove to state-owned Cipto Mangunkusumo Hospital in Central Jakarta.

“We arrived at 4 a.m. and had to wait until the front desk opened at 6 a.m. The front desk officer told us to go to the NICU but when I showed them the recommendation letter, they said they didn’t have a room for my baby,” Eliyas said.

They continued on to state-owned Harapan Kita Hospital, to no avail. By day four, they had visited a total of 10 hospitals, including Pasar Rebo Hospital in East Jakarta; St. Carolus Hospital in Central Jakarta; Harapan Bunda Hospital in East Jakarta; Tria Dipa Hospital in South Jakarta; Asri Hospital in South Jakarta; Budi Asih Hospital in East Jakarta; and Pertamina Hospital in South Jakarta. The Tria Dipa and Asri hospitals have yet to be incorporated into the Jakarta Health Card program.

“All the hospitals said they either had no rooms available or the facilities we needed,” Herman said.

Eliyas, who wants to have a Jakarta Health Card, said he expected more state hospitals to be equipped with NICUs to help low-income parents like himself.

Jokowi, as the governor is popularly known, admitted that many city-owned hospitals did not have NICUs and thus had to expand their third-class services to accommodate impoverished Jakartans.

There has been a 70 percent increase in the number of low-income patients since the launch of the Jakarta Health Card program in November last year and not all hospitals have anticipated the increase, according to Jokowi.

As many as 3,000 Jakarta residents already have Jakarta Health Cards. The city administration has allocated Rp 1.2 trillion for the program and aims to deliver 4.5 million cards this year.

Jakarta Health Agency head Dien Emmawati said she would be summoning the directors of the 10 hospitals that rejected Eliyas’ baby on Tuesday to discuss the matter.

Jakarta Deputy Governor Basuki Tjahaja Purnama said the city planned to build an integrated healthcare system to help patients find appropriate health services.