People Self-Empowered to Prevent Spread of Covid-19

The Covid-19 pandemic has taught us many lessons. One of them is the importance of empowering people to promote self-prevention. The basic concept is that the people are at the forefront of prevention (preventive), not health workers.

Unfortunately, creating community-based self-prevention to prevent the spread of Covid-19 is not the current choice of the Indonesian government. The government prefers a curative approach. An approach that relies on health workers, medicines, infrastructure, and the national health system, which is actually far from ideal.

The fundamental question of a curative approach is how far the level of adequacy of facilities, infrastructure and human resources in the health sector has the ability to fight the increasingly rapid spread of the Covid-19 pandemic? Especially with the increasing number of mutants born from SARS-CoV-2.

The case in Kudus regency, Central Java, recently after Lebaran is an example of a real case. People who are not educated in terms of implementing health protocols have recklessly committed violations resulting in the soaring number of positive cases and deaths due to Covid-19.

Community education

The best practice that can be considered as a reference is the Community Based Total Sanitation program (STBM). The Health Ministry\'s program, which was introduced in 2009, is an effort to educate the public so that they can independently prevent the spread of “diarocal” diseases.

Cross-sectoral programs are implemented in stages at the district, subdistrict and village levels. In general, the Regency Development Planning, Research and Development Agency (Bappeda) serves as a guide for synchronization between related regional institutions, while the local health office acts as the leading sector.

Nationally, the Health Ministry acts as the national leading sector, the gatekeeper to keep the program running on track by maintaining active cross-sectoral cooperation at the national level.

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At the village level, the spearhead of this program are cadres at the neighborhood unit (RT) or community unit (RW) level. Indonesia has millions of health cadres, family welfare empowerment cadres (PKK) or dasawisma cadres. They are evenly distributed in almost all villages. These cadres are technically or non-technically trained, such as in public speaking, influencing stakeholders at the RT and RW levels, and in general they are the role models in the community.

KOMPAS/RADITYA HELABUMI

Welcome banners are installed on the alley in Johar Baru Village, Central Jakarta, which was chosen as one of the Tangguh Jaya Villages in Jakarta, Thursday (28/01/2021). This program is expected to increase public awareness in the discipline of implementing health protocols to prevent the transmission of Covid-19.

Except for the village cadres, the empirical experience of partners from non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in implementing the 2011-2016 STBM programs in nine regencies/cities in the provinces of West Nusa Tenggara (NTB), East Nusa Tenggara (NTT) and Papua shows that Elementary School (SD) students at the village level has proven to be effective as an agent of change in their respective families and neighborhoods.

They, except for mothers, have a strong influence in changing the behavior of other family members in the implementation of the five STBM pillars.

One of the keys to the success of community-based programs is to make the village cadres motivated. Thus, the cadre-training process in the form of cadre education needs to be carried out on the basis of a syllabus that is oriented towards awareness, not indoctrination.

Educational techniques are certainly carried out, for example through the training of trainers (ToT) process or training for trainers, and so on, as is common in community education programs.

Therefore, the delivery of material in the educational syllabus is carried out in stages. Cadres in the regency train those in the district, the cadres in the district train those in the villages and the village cadres train cadres at the RT and RW levels. Meanwhile, the regency-level cadres are trained by program consultants/partner NGOs as those in-charge in the field.

These include maintaining a healthy and nutritious diet, keeping a distance when in a crowd, wearing a mask, washing hands with soap or hand sanitizer, and not talking much in public places.

With the presence of millions of various cadres, the activities are spread throughout Indonesia and have been trained, and the elementary school students at the village level should not be underestimated. To deal with the Covid-19 pandemic, they only need to be touched with the technical matters of health protocols. These include maintaining a healthy and nutritious diet, keeping a distance when in a crowd, wearing a mask, washing hands with soap or hand sanitizer, and not talking much in public places.

Through mutual monitoring method involving community members, the implementation of health protocols is kept in place because the community reminds each other. That is also what is applied in the STBM program.

Research proves

The Basic Health Research (Riskesdas) conducted periodically by the Ministry of Health since 2012 proves that community-based prevention methods are able to create people who can independently take steps to prevent the spread of disease effectively.

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Community-based programs were able to suppress 62 percent of “diarocal” diseases at the STBM implementing regency/city level, accompanied by partner NGOs.

Preventive approach

The government needs to consider this community-based prevention approach to combat Covid-19, as is the implementation of the STBM program in combating the spread of “diarocal” diseases. Of course, health workers are still needed, but they are no longer placed on the frontline because their numbers are very insufficient nationally. The village cadres numbered millions of volunteers. Not to mention the elementary students!

From a budgetary aspect, the preventive approach is relatively cheaper than the costly curative approach. In addition, the sustainability aspect in the prevention approach is much greater.

KOMPAS/ERIKA KURNIA

The Tangguh Village Team in the South Mangga Dua Village, Sawah Besar District, Central Jakarta. Monday (17/5/2021), they supervised the implementation of the Covid-19 test service for residents who had just returned from homecoming activities

Knowledge and prevention practices by the community will continue from generation to generation, from parents to children and so on, becoming community wisdom.

The multiplier impact of community-based programs is also very large. For example, in the education process, the skills for producing hand sanitizers are inserted independently at the RT/RW level so that dependence on external supplies can be avoided.

Abang Rahino, Former Communication and Information Officer at the SHAW-Simavi program

(This article was translated by Kurniawan Siswoko).