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The show must go on for dentists in ‘new normal’
In Jakarta, a patient pays Rp 600,000 ($40.50) for a tooth removal, but in Cirebon regency a dental clinic can only charge a patient half the amount for the service.
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Open wide: Dela, a dentist (right) fixes a crown on a patient’s tooth in a dental clinic in Cipete, South Jakarta. During the procedure, Dela and her assistant have to wear personal protective equipment (PPE). (JP/Arief Suhardiman)
I
n the evening, two days after Idul Fitri (Lebaran) early last month, a crowd gathered and leaned over a long pair of rails by a flyover above the Trans-Java toll road at the outskirts of Cirebon, West Java, some 250 kilometers east of Jakarta. In the fair weather that evening, I was on my way home after working as a dentist in a private clinic.
I learned that the crowd was watching a long traffic jam on the toll road. As far as the eye could see, there were shining headlamps and rear lamps of cars lining up from the east to the west. The toll-road operator was imposing one-way traffic heading to Jakarta to facilitate the holidaymakers’ return to their places of residence.
According to the Transportation Ministry, around 85 million people hit the roads during Idul Fitri’s long holiday, or about one third of Indonesia’s population. Of that number, 14 million travellers came from Jakarta.
The Lebaran 2022 homecoming rite did not only motivate the human exodus. Bank Indonesia said during Ramadan and the holiday season, cash withdrawal reached Rp 180 trillion (US$12 billion).
This year’s Idul Fitri exodus is the most phenomenal illustration socially and financially of the people's reaction toward the current improvement in public health. Optimism was demonstrated not only on streets, but also in schools, offices, markets, shopping malls, public transportation, entertainment venues and tourist destinations.
Such a display of confidence in turn seeds confidence in my mind and heart. The COVID-19 vaccination, which is reported to have covered almost the whole population, and the government’s easing of regulations on human mobility have triggered my optimism.
The return of patients to the clinic means a lot psychologically and economically to a dentist like me, who relies on health services as the main source of family income. When the pandemic was sweeping across the world from 2020 to 2021, the clinic where I worked was closed. The reason was the government’s mobility curb and the World Health Organization’s call.
