PENAJAM –Nusantara Capital Authority (NCA) through the Deputy for Social, Culture, and Community Empowerment (Sosbudpemas), is trying to prevent the spread of Acute Respiratory Infection (infeksi saluran pernafasan akut/ISPA) in the midst of the community and workers in the Nusantara area.

The activity, which was jointly carried out with the Director General of Infectious Disease Prevention and Control (P2PM) and the Director General of Environmental Health, Ministry of Health (Kemenkes) of the Republic of Indonesia, was carried out on Wednesday (6/9/2023) morning at the Multipurpose Building for Residential Construction Workers (HPK) Nusantara.

"Overcoming air pollution with proper mitigation, the Nusantara Authority together with the Ministry of Health carried out a campaign to prevent ISPA by holding outreach and symbolically distributing 4 thousand boxes of masks to representatives of sub-district workers and village in around the NUSANTARA East Kalimantan Provincial Health Office, representatives of public health center at PPU and Kutai Kartanegara. ," said Deputy Sosbudpemas of NCA, Alimuddin, on the sidelines of the activity.

He explained that this activity was held as an effort to prevent accurate respiratory tract infection (ISPA) and that conditions were currently entering the dry season. Especially in the Nusantara construction area, there are lots of dust particles flying around.

“The assistance we are providing is a stimulant step. We hope that companies can take part in prevention by providing masks for every workers," he said.

In addition, he appealed to the community around the Nusantara location, such as in the Pemaluan Village, Bumi Harapan Village, and Bukit Raya, to provide understanding to their residents, including all schools in their area.

"We asked Village Head to be more active in providing understanding to their residents regarding ISPA, including asking schools to prepare masks, because schools have a budget for this," he said.

According to him, the safety or Occupational Health and Safety (K3) officers of each company in the NUSANTARA area are much more knowledgeable than his party, so he asked not to ignore this ISPA problem. Because if there are workers who are sick due to ISPA, the Authority will also be affected which is not good for reporting on Nusantara development.

"So we ask that this ISPA should be a concern for every company, not to be ignored," asked Alimuddin.

On that occasion, the Director of Basic Services for the NCA, Suwito explained, this activity aims to mobilize business actors and the surrounding community to have concern for the use of masks, care for efforts to prevent diseases caused by exposure to dust.

“To achieve this good goal, our first step is to provide education first. We hope that these efforts can be continued by companies to provide continuous assistance to their workers," he said.

After this stimulant, he continued, the NCA would follow up with company actors to be able to provide masks independently on an ongoing basis. As can be seen from the condition of the workers and roads in the field, when entering the Nusantara construction area, the situation was very high with dust.

"Our next effort will be to provide an official letter of appeal, for all companies to follow up on this campaign, namely to provide masks for their workers," he said.

Meanwhile, the Head of the Ministry of Health's ISPA Working Team, dr. Nani Rizkiyati said that her party was certainly interested in following up immediately by socializing the ISPA program, regarding how to prevent and treat it. Moreover, her party received information from the Authority if there were many development workers at the Nusantara.

"We received information regarding the large number of Nusantara development workers who have contracted ISPA, in principle prevention is better than cure," she said.

In addition, based on data from her party in Indonesia, BPJS Kesehatan claims related to ISPA or pneumonia are quite high, so it is a concern for her party. Meanwhile, the Nusantara will become a shelter when the center of government begins to move here in the future.

"Especially lately, the percentage of ISPA has indeed increased somewhat, although it has not increased significantly. This means it has increased within normal limits.

However, she added, if you look at the conditions in the Nusantara construction area, it is considered that air pollution in the form of dust is quite a risk for increasing ARI, regardless of the cause.

"Apart from ISPA, we are also working with the Authority to find ways to reduce air pollution in the Nusantara development area," she said.

Separately, a construction worker at the Nusantara named Roni said he was happy with the activity, he hopes the company can follow up by providing Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) in the form of masks.

"We hope that what is done by the Authority and the Ministry of Health will be followed up by the company, by providing anti-dust masks for us," he concluded.
 

(Wednesday, September 6th  2023)

Photo Documentation
Source: Nusantara Capital Authority Public Relations