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Moeldoko, Ganjar's claims of false COVID-19 diagnoses harmful, miss core problems
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Nurses tend to a COVID-19 patient at Bogor General Hospital in Bogor, West Java on Sept. 3, 2020. (AFP/Adek Berry)
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s Indonesia struggles to suppress COVID-19 cases and deaths, government officials appear to be shifting the blame to hospitals by raising claims of false diagnoses -- which medical professionals say would erode public trust and further delay treatments, all the while missing the core of the problem: long testing turnaround times.
The Indonesian Hospital Association (PERSI) slammed the government over claims it said were not based on facts and evidence, saying they would "prompt stigma and have an extraordinary influence on eroding public trust in hospitals".
"It is feared that this will have a negative impact on the healthcare service provided by hospitals," the association's chairman, Kuntjoro Adi Purjanto, said in a statement.
Presidential Chief of Staff Moeldoko made the controversial statement after a meeting with Central Java Governor Ganjar Pranowo in Semarang last week, during which he conveyed his skepticism about the number of fatalities declared to have been caused by or linked to COVID-19.
“Not all deaths are caused by COVID-19,” he said, as quoted by various media reports. “This needs to be clarified. Don’t let this benefit those who seek profit from the [medical] definition.”
Ganjar supported Moeldoko’s claim, saying there had been false COVID-19 diagnoses in Central Java; there were people diagnosed with COVID-19 who then died before receiving their test results, with the results eventually coming back negative.
Their statements on reworking the definition of a COVID-19 death came not long after East Java Governor Khofifah Indar Parawansa reportedly made a similar request to the Health Ministry, which she later clarified. The national COVID-19 task force has since dismissed any attempts to redefine a COVID-19 death.
