UNS — The Covid-19 has been going on for more than 1.5 years in Indonesia. A health protocol that is often ignored by the community is the suggestion to wear masks in their daily life. This situation encourages Group A1 of the Thematic Student Community Service (KKN Tematik) from the Faculty of Medical Science (FK) Universitas Sebelas Maret (UNS) Surakarta to encourage the use of double masks in the Great Solo Region alongside the Micro, Small, and Medium Enterprise (MSME).
Under the supervision of Adji Suwandono, dr., S.H., Sp.F., on Wednesday (10/8/2021), the team targeted MSMEs in Solo with a high transaction rate. “The MSME become the target of this activity are Say Story, Janji Jiwa, Fremilt, Hasbona photocopy, and Toko Pena, located in Jebres Sub-District. This activity aims to reduce the Covid-19 spread and consists of three activities, starting with the education of the importance of double mask usage, distribution of medical and cloth mask, and distribution of educational poster,” reveals the KKN Team leader, Affan Rayhan Ismail.
The educational poster distributed should get approval from the MSME to be posted on site. The poster is then pasted on the MSME wall to give educational information to the community regarding the importance of double mask usage. “This program is expected to enhance the community awareness on the importance of wearing a mask to reduce the Covid-19 transmissions. Furthermore, this program introduces the use of double mask as suggested by the Minister of Health (Kemenkes) last July,” explains the student of Medical Science.
As of July 2021, the Kemenkes suggest the community start wearing a double mask to anticipate the spread of the new Covid-19 variant. This suggestion on double mask usage is based on the mask effectiveness difference in filtering particles. Quoted from the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and World Health Organization (WHO), medical masks and cloth masks have an effectiveness rate of 43-62% and 41-44%, respectively. Wearing a medical mask and cloth mask will increase the effectiveness to 66-81%. “Therefore, medical masks and cloth masks will be more effective to inhibit viruses and particles that will enter the respiratory tract,” he added.
This double mask suggestion only applies for medical masks and cloth masks; this provision is not applicable for KN95 or N95 masks that have 95% effectiveness, thus not needing to be added. “The use of masks by the community is still incorrect. Often we see people wearing one layer of masks, either cloth masks only or medical masks only. Sometimes, people wear double masks with KN95 and medical masks, but we also see some people do not wear masks. Because of this, our team chose this program,” said one of the team members, Aulia Ninggar Nadhira.
As the A1 Team Leader for the KKN Tematik FK UNS, Affan hopes to improve community awareness on the health protocol implementation, especially because wearing a mask can reduce the Covid-19 transmission rate and help the government fight the Covid-19 pandemic. Humas UNS
Reporter: Bayu Aji Prasetya
Editor: Dwi Hastuti