UNAIR NEWS The doctor who invented skin barrierfrom coconut shells, Dr. Vicky S Budipramana, dr., SpB., KBD, is a care-full doctor towards his patients. In the past,he produced his home-made coconut shell to be given to his patients for free. Why, because he got the shells free from the market.
淏ut it couldn檛 be like that forever. Right now we have to buy a coconut in its whole. One coconut shell can be made into four or five products. Patients just pay back production cost and materials, cheap not more than five thousand rupiah, he explained.
However, being cheap doesn檛 mean people are looking for it. He admitted that not all of his patients were willing to use skin barrierfrom coconut shell. If the patient was wealthy, he or she preferred to use colostomy bag.
Various factory-made colostomy bagswere claimed to be more comfortable to use. What a patient had to do was just stick it on the skin, without using a belt or elastic rubber. The product was also highly absorbent but lasted only a few days. Furthermore, it costs a fortune.
淐oconut shell products are especially for penniless patients and live in periphery areas. Just imagine, if they have to buy the expensive one, one bag for 3-4 day usage times Rp 80 thousand. How much is that? Not to mention they are villagers, where can they buy it? Colostomy bagsare only available in town, he explained.
Coconut shells are different. Besides easy to get, coconut shells are highly absorbent and easy to maintain. When the stoma bag are already full with excretion fluid, the coconut shell can be removed and washed. The remaining crust on the surface of the shell can be brushed until clean, then dried under the sun for 7 hours or microwaved at 130 degrees temperature for 20 minutes. After that it can be reused for the rest of the patient檚 life.
Both have their own shortcomings and superiorities. Karayagam, for example. Under blistered and wet skin, it can檛 be used. Eventually, the patient has to use coconut shell for some time before his or her skin improves.
On the other hand, coconut shell is not comfortable to use, because it檚 not practical and one must use elastic rubber with it. But for penniless patient, it helps a lot. Without having to spend more money, they save their skin from irritation, without altering their activities.
It seems that using coconut shell as skin barrierhappens only in Indonesia and there檚 a big chance it will be used in other tropical lands.
There were some conditions for the product to be made legally. To have his product patented, he went through a long and winding road. Long before he fought for a patent, he researched the potential of coconut shell first, and then it succeeded in getting attention from an international journal.
Then in 2008 he applied for a patent. But his struggle to get a patent was impeded the patent giver stated that his patent idea was exactly the same as another product in a journal, which made his invention unoriginal anymore. After going through a hard time, his innovation was finally legalized in 2012.
According to him, the number of colon cancer patients were increasing from year to year. Every week, RSUD Dr. Soetomo Emergency Room receives tens of new colon cancer patients. Many of them come from outside Surabaya, from small villages.
He even taught his patients how to make skin barrier from coconut shells.
淟ooks easy, but not everybody can make it. Because there are more demands on it, I finally asked some people to make them, and the patients just have to pay for the cost and material. This is non-commercial,漢e explained. (*)
Author: Sefya H. Istighfarica
Editor: Defrina Sukma S
