'New SOP for frontliners' children to manage transmission risks, not discriminatory'

CORONAVIRUS | Health Ministry director-general Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah has stressed that there is no element of discrimination in the new proposed guideline for children of healthcare frontliners to remain at home or be placed separately from other children at taska (childcare centres and nurseries).

“About taska, it is not because we discriminate – we do not discriminate in treating. What we see is risk and there are two groups who are high-risk, one is the families of positive cases and the second is Health Ministry frontliners.

“So following the guidelines by Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in the US, we need to look at the risk, but it is not discrimination. We are not forbidding the children (of frontliners) from going to taska, but we are preparing a special place for the children of frontliners,” Noor Hisham said in the ministry’s daily press briefing on Covid-19 today.

He explained that there is no problem if the children were to go to taska at hospitals where they will be mingling with other children of frontliners, but if they were to mix with other children, they have to have a special place prepared.

“Not isolation but a special place prepared so we can give specific attention to the children of frontliners,” Noor Hisham said.

Perhaps the way the guideline was worded made it seem like it was about isolation, he said, but it is more about being able to give the children of frontliners more attention.

Besides, Noor Hisham (photo) added, this guideline has yet to be brought to the National Security Council (NSC) as it is still being fine-tuned.

It needs to be approved by the NSC before the guideline can be implemented, he said.

Now that they have received feedback from the Health Ministry’s frontliners, he said they need to prepare a special place for the children of frontliners.

“There is no discrimination in the sense that we are stopping them (from attending taska). We do not forbid, but we give them certain spaces so that the children who are mixing together at the taska are only groups who have been identified,” Noor Hisham said.

He insisted that the Health Ministry does not practice discrimination, be it among citizens or non-citizens, adults or children and frontliners or not.

Separately, the Women, Family and Community Development Minister Rina Mohd Harun said the guideline for taska is subject to the directives of the NSC as well as the advice of the Health Ministry.

“The SOP (for taska) will not be issued without the advice and reference from Health Ministry and NSC because this is a matter of security and public health,” she added.

Rina said in the country’s efforts to break the chain of Covid-19 infection, every SOP issued was based on the advice of experts, especially from the Health Ministry.

Previously, it was reported that the Welfare Department under the Women, Family and Community Development Ministry had issued a revised guide stating that “children of frontliners are at high risk of getting the (Covid-19) infection from their parents. The safest place for these children is home care. Even so, if frontliners’ children are sent to taska, they must be isolated from other children”.

This had prompted over 200 paediatricians to call on the government to remove this stipulation which they deemed as “discriminatory” and risked alienating frontliners and their children.  - Mkini