The Importance of Prehospital and Disaster Medicine in Rural Areas in Indonesia: A Viewpoint on Health Issues for Rural Societies

Some of the complaints expressed were the difficulty of carrying out health checks at a low cost and the distance to the examination site requiring water vehicles (because land routes are difficult to pass); the difficulty of making referrals because it is not easy to access travel to referral points; the lack of assistance from the village to accommodate community needs to referral service places; salaries that are not commensurate with the risk; delays in referrals; and so on. Hearing these complaints, we took the initiative to help in the form of conducting free checks (blood pressure, uric acid, and blood sugar checks) for the elderly with their own personal funds, of course with permission and cooperation with health workers in the village. Community empowerment that can be carried out by the village includes training for community health cadres; transportation of health cadres; examination or assistance for pregnant, maternity, postpartum, and breastfeeding women; monitoring growth and provision of healthy food, and so on, which can be obtained from village funds. 7 The use of village funds for health, especially for empowering rural communities, can increase the community’s ability to be able to live a healthy life, to be able to deal with health problems independently, that can play an active role in every health development, and can become a driving force in realizing development with a health perspective. 8 For this reason, village funds that are properly allocated will certainly bring changes to the village, both in terms of improving facilities and infrastructure, as well as in terms of health and other aspects. [...]it is possible that public health can be realized.