By: Alexander Joshua Galen )*
The draft Health Law (RUU) continues to strive to ensure that there is much clearer, more certain and firmer legal protection for the interests of doctors and all health workers in Indonesia.
The Ministry of Health of the Republic of Indonesia (Kemenkes RI) said that precisely with the rejection by a number of professional organizations in the world of health related to the existence of the Draft Health Law (RUU), this actually has the potential to continue and further hinder the availability of legal protection for the doctors and health workers (Nakes).
How could it not be, in fact the existence of the Health Bill which is currently being discussed by the House of Representatives (DPR RI) together with the Government of the Republic of Indonesia is able to provide clearer and stronger legal protection for all doctors and health workers when they provide health services to public.
The Indonesian Government’s efforts to continue to guarantee and provide legal protection to doctors and health workers through the existence of the Health Bill have been rejected by a number of professional organizations. Such refusal will greatly interfere with the achievement of clearer and stronger legal protection.
In this regard, the Spokesman (spokesperson) for the Ministry of Health, Mohammad Syahril stated that many articles regarding the law, which doctors and health workers have been concerned about for a long time, should they continue to refer to the applicable regulations or laws (UU). At the moment.
Even though they have been worried about the issue of legal protection for a long time, in fact there are absolutely no professional organizations (OP) and/or individuals on the part of doctors and health workers who speak out loud and have the initiative to immediately propose improvements to existing regulations. there is, which has been the case for almost the last 20 years.
Seeing that there was no initiative whatsoever from professional organizations or individuals in the health world, then in the end the DPR RI started this initiative by trying to make improvements to the existing laws, so that in the future several articles regarding legal protection will be much better, of course.
The initiative carried out by the House of Representatives then received full support from the Government of the Republic of Indonesia because it was considered to bring about many improvements and also increase the overall quality of legal protection, including also with the existence of the Health Bill, health workers would be able to further improve the quality of health services to people in the country.
On the contrary, there is still resistance from a handful of parties, who actually want and try to return articles related to the existing law to the way they used to be, even though in these articles there is no clear legal protection at all and there have always been concerns and It has been proven that in the past, regulations often caused legal problems for doctors and health workers in Indonesia.
It becomes quite contradictory if the attitude of professional organizations rejects the existence of the Health Bill, because they have not taken the initiative to improve legal protection for doctors and health workers, even though they have been worried about it for a long time.
Then, the second problem is that in the Health Bill there is a situation when doctors can be sued criminally or civilly, even though they have already undergone disciplinary hearings. It is clear that this issue is no longer relevant to raise, because in fact the same rules have been contained in the old law that has been in force so far, namely in the Medical Practice Law Number 29 of 2004.
For information, Article 68 paragraph (1) of the Medical Practice Law 29/2004 clearly states that anyone who knows or has an interest harmed by the actions of a doctor or dentist in carrying out medical practice can complain in writing to the Chairperson of the Indonesian Medical Discipline Honorary Council.
Furthermore, paragraph (3) states that the complaint does not eliminate the right of every person to report suspected criminal acts to the authorities and/or file a lawsuit against civil damages to court.
So far, indeed all the articles that have been considered problematic, in particular regarding legal protection for doctors and health workers, are still being discussed by the Indonesian Parliament and the Government of the Republic of Indonesia, with the aim that they can continue to be improved.
In other words, actually legal protection for doctors and health workers in the country’s health world will be guaranteed much better and clearer when this Health Bill is issued. The rejection on several points is actually completely irrelevant because so far doctors and health workers continue to worry about the protection of the law itself, moreover, the points that are being rejected are the rules which have actually been in the previous law for a long time.
)* The author is a Contributor to Suara Khatulistiwa