Indonesia’s health-care workers struggle with a ‘double burden’ as cases rise

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Indonesia’s health-care workers struggle with a ‘double burden’ as cases rise, humanitarian organization says

• Medical workers in Indonesia are grappling with the pressure of caring for Covid-19 patients while vaccinating the population, Edhie Rahmat of Project HOPE said.
  
• “The longer the pandemic lasts and the higher the caseload builds, will impact their workload and make them vulnerable to transmission and infection,” he said.
  
• Indonesia’s coronavirus cases have spiked in recent weeks following the Eid holiday in May, and only 4.6% of the country is fully vaccinated.
  

Medical workers in Indonesia are grappling with the pressure of caring for Covid-19 patients while quickly vaccinating the country’s residents as infections increase, according to a global health and humanitarian relief organization.

“Health care workers in Indonesia are struggling with a double burden,” said Edhie Rahmat, executive director for Indonesia at Project HOPE, short for Health Opportunities for People Everywhere.

First, they have to take care of both Covid patients and patients with other diseases. Second, they are “under pressure to rapidly cover a high number of populations that need to be vaccinated,” he told CNBC in an email.

Total infections crossed the 2 million threshold on Monday, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University. More than 55,594 people have died of Covid-19 in Indonesia. Meanwhile, around 8.9% of Indonesia’s population has received at least one dose of a Covid vaccine, and 4.6% of the country is fully vaccinated, according to Our World in Data.

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