JAKARTA: It seems he was born for the job. Emergency medicine expert Dr. Corona Rintawan is heading a task force set up by Indonesia’s second-largest Muslim organization, Muhammadiyah, to contain the spread of coronavirus.
“The Muhammadiyah COVID-19 Command Center (MCCC) is set up to consolidate all Muhammadiyah assets in an integrated effort to mitigate the spread of the coronavirus,” Rintawan told Arab News on Thursday.
Rintawan was appointed to lead the MCCC, an interdisciplinary task force with 13 experts educating the public on how to stop the spread of the virus.
His emergency experience includes being in medical teams responding to Typhoon Haiyan in the Philippines in 2013 and the 2015 Nepal earthquake. He also took part in a humanitarian mission for the Rohingya in Myanmar in 2017.
“We are taking a proactive approach to assist the government in early diagnoses or early treatment for patients that show initial symptoms of infection,” Rintawan said.
He added: “We will ensure that such patients will receive treatment in accordance with the health protocol that the government has issued for the outbreak, before we refer them to government hospitals should they need further treatment.”
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The 45-year-old doctor, who is based at a Muhammadiyah-run hospital in Lamongan, East Java, said: “The public has to be well-informed that they could carry the risk of spreading the virus. We want to encourage the people to take the initiative to prevent it, by washing their hands often, getting themselves diagnosed should they feel they have symptoms, knowing when they have to wear face masks, donating masks to those who need them and eventually to self-isolate when necessary.
“It is about self-containment by one person who is aware of the situation and knows what to do to take care of oneself in the face of virus threats. It could create a positive domino effect in terms of reducing the potential to contract others with the virus.”
According to Rintawan, Muhammadiyah has designated 20 out of its 171 hospitals across the country to serve as referral facilities for persons suspected of having contracted the virus.
Asked about his name, the doctor said his parents would name their children in alphabetical order. Being the third, his name had to start with “c.”
“There was no such thing as baby name books at that time, so they decided to take my name from the Toyota Corona car, which was a popular model back in the 1970s, and as they also found that it means a crown, which symbolizes something good,” he said.
Indonesia has 34 confirmed cases, including a British woman who died at a hospital in Bali on Wednesday, marking the country’s first coronavirus deaths.
Government spokesperson for the outbreak Achmad Yurianto said that three coronavirus patients have recovered and would be discharged from a hospital in East Jakarta.
The immigration office said that in the past month Indonesia has denied entry to 126 foreign nationals following thermal screening.
On Sunday, the country imposed a temporary transit and visit ban for those who recently traveled to coronavirus-hit Iran, South Korea and Italy. Visitors from China have been barred from entering Indonesia since Feb. 5.
