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Jakarta Post

Hospitals set to treat defeated legislative candidates

How it ends: A nurse makes the bed of the Mahoni General Hospital in Medan, North Sumatra, on Friday

Wahyoe Boediwardhana (The Jakarta Post)
Mojokerto, Tulungagung, East Java
Sat, March 29, 2014

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Hospitals set to treat defeated legislative candidates How it ends: A nurse makes the bed of the Mahoni General Hospital in Medan, North Sumatra, on Friday. The hospital has set up a ward that will house legislative candidates who are expected to suffer from psychological and mental problems after losing the election. (Antara/Septianda Perdana) (Antara/Septianda Perdana)

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span class="inline inline-none">How it ends: A nurse makes the bed of the Mahoni General Hospital in Medan, North Sumatra, on Friday. The hospital has set up a ward that will house legislative candidates who are expected to suffer from psychological and mental problems after losing the election. (Antara/Septianda Perdana)

A janitor wearing a blue and yellow uniform cleans the window of Raden Wijaya pavilion at Wahidin Sudiro Husodo General Hospital in Mojokerto, East Java, on Thursday.

Painted in bone white, the 25-square-meter VIP pavilion, which is named after a famous Javanese king, has two beds: one for the patient and the smaller one for his or her accompanying guest, a 29-inch LCD TV, an air conditioner unit, a one-door refrigerator and two couches.

The pavilion, located on the third-story of the hospital'€™s main building, also has a bathroom equipped with a toilet, a shower, a table and chairs positioned just outside the room.

Visiting guests and relatives can also use a large elevator that allows them reach the pavilion directly from the building'€™s ground floor.

In total, the hospital has 15 VIP pavilions, with seven located in the south side of its main building and eight in the north. To maintain privacy, those who want to visit this facility must first pass through security checks on the ground floor. Nurses and attending physicians are also available around the clock to assist VIP patients.

The hospital administration said it had exclusively prepared the VIP pavilions, which cost each patient Rp 450,000 (US$39.6) per night, to treat legislative candidates who fail in their bids to win in the April 9 legislative election and who develop mental illnesses as a result.

'€œThe [room] charge, however, does not yet cover medical treatment for the patients,'€ Ainun, an information officer at the RSUD, told The Jakarta Post.

A psychiatrist, according to Ainun, will be assigned to treat patients in the hospital'€™s VIP facility, with support from nurses and attending physicians. To help the patients'€™ recovery, the hospital has assigned only experienced nurses to work in the facility.  

The hospital previously said it had prepared three isolation rooms to treat legislative candidates who developed mental illnesses after losing their election bids.

'€œWe are preparing [the isolation rooms] as one of our services to the public, but we hope there will be no one suffering from severe psychological pressure [after the election],'€ hospital director Sugeng Mulyadi told reporters.

Data from the Health Ministry showed more than 7,000 people suffered from mental illnesses '€” both serious and minor '€” throughout 2010, most of them legislative candidates who lost  election bids in 2009.

There are 6,607 candidates running for 560 available House of Representatives seats in the 2014 legislative election. Meanwhile, the other 200,000 are vying to secure one of the 2,137 seats on offer in the country'€™s 33 Provincial Legislative Councils (DPRD I), or one of the 17,560 seats in 497 Regional and Municipal Legislative Councils (DPRD II).

Social Affairs Minister Salim Segaf Al-Jufri recently urged all regional hospitals to provide special facilities for legislative candidates feeling the psychological strain as a result of election defeat, since the ministry was unable to provide medication or other medical facilities for them.

Mojokerto RSUD is one of two hospitals in East Java that have publicly announced that they have prepared special facilities to treat legislative candidates who are dealing with severe psychological pressure following election defeats.

Tulungagung'€™s Dr. Iskak Regional Hospital also confirmed it had prepared 200 rooms to treat losing candidates, despite the absence of psychiatrists.

The hospital'€™s head of service control division, Sudjianto, said the hospital had also installed CCTV cameras to run 24-hour-surveillance on patients who were suffering from depression.

'€œShould their conditions worsen, we will immediately send them to the mental hospital,'€ he said, while referring to Menur Mental Hospital in Surabaya and Lawang Mental Hospital in Malang regency.

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