As of Friday 109 doctors had died of COVID-19 in the country, Indonesian Medical Association (IDI) spokesperson Halik Malik has said.
He added that as long as local transmission still occurred and resulted in a high number of daily confirmed COVID-19 cases, doctors and other medical workers would continue to face a high risk of contracting the virus.
“Of the 109 fallen doctors, 49 were specialist doctors, 53 were general physicians and seven were professors,” Halik said on Friday, as quoted by kompas.com.
With 3,861 more COVID-19 cases on Thursday, Indonesia has seen a total of 207,203 infections since March. Halik said such a situation affected the well-being and job performance of medical workers as they dealt directly with patients during the pandemic.
Besides doctors, nine dentists had also died of COVID-19 as of Tuesday, the IDI reported. Meanwhile, 70 nurses had died of the disease as of Monday, according to the Indonesian Nurses Association (PPNI).
A recent survey by the University of Indonesia’s (UI) School of Medicine also reveals 82 percent of healthcare workers across the country are suffering from burnout.
Halik added that of doctors who had died, the largest number, 29, were based in East Java, 20 were in North Sumatra and 13 in Jakarta.
On Thursday, a 52-year-old doctor in Medan, North Sumatra, died of COVID-19, bringing the total tally in Medan to 12.
Medan IDI chairman Wijaya Juwarna called on the local government to classify and differentiate between COVID-19 hospitals and non-COVID-19 hospitals in Medan to reduce the risk of medical workers getting infected.
“We don’t know [about the classification] all this time, we only know that doctors are facing a high risk in any hospital, unless the hospital uses different buildings [for COVID-19 patients], which means traffic for the emergency unit and elevators are also different,” he said.
