Neurosurgical Surgery Expert Lectures on Adverse Functional in Nervous System
reported by: Liu Setiawan
Jember, October 18, 2024/Indonesia Media – Neurological surgery expert, Prof. Satyanegara said that being wise and prudent when using pesticide will minimize the risk of adverse functional or structural change in the nervous system. “Uncontrolled pesticide usage would be a big loss to farmers, consumers and environment,” he said when delivering a public lecture in Jember University (UNEJ)’s medical faculty (FK).
According to him, one of the crucial factors of adverse functional or structural change in the nervous system, would cause illnesses such as Parkinson, brain tumor, Alzheimer, epilepsy, dementia and Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS). As Indonesia is one of the world’s largest producers and exporters of agricultural products, most of the people work in agriculture and modern agriculture, and pesticide usage was unavoidable.
Even, based on a research report, the figure of pesticide usage in Indonesia, tends to hike up 100 thousand tons per year. Therefore, the circumstance puts Indonesia as the third largest pesticide-using country in the world, after Brazil and the United States of America.
He explained neurotoxicity, which is actually a form of toxicity in which a biological, chemical, or physical agent produces an adverse effect on the structure or function of the central and/or peripheral nervous system. It occurs when exposure to a substance – specifically, a neurotoxin or neurotoxicant– alters the normal activity of the nervous system in such a way as to cause permanent or reversible damage to nervous tissue. “Adverse effects on pesticide in the long run, would produce an abnormal mitochondrion of brain’s cells and could cause a variety of illnesses such as Alzheimer, epilepsy, dementia and ALS,” he said.
Specifically on ALS, is a progressive, paralytic, neurodegenerative disease affecting the upper and lower motor neurons. ALS is the most common motor neuron disease (MND) and has both sporadic and familial forms. And till now, the process of inventing medicine is still unyielding. Therefore farmers are supposed to be more prudent whether they use it or not.
Prof. Satyanegara, who was a former personal physician of Indonesian president, the late Soeharto expects FK UNEJ conduct research continually, in the event, there are varied occurrences of illnesses and diseases in agrarian countries or agromedicine research. This would be helpful to improve the farmers’ health, farmer producer company and consumers. This is relevant to the vision and mission of UNEJ, focusing on agriculture development and the plantation industry.
Meanwhile, experiences related to the effect of pesticide usage have been suffered by industry, which founded PT Mitra Tani 25. The founder, Mr. Sigit Hendrawan Samsu once suffered from a big loss due to ten rejected containers of edamame (Japanese dish containing soybeans in their pods), which had been transported to Japan. “the reason was, the Japanese government regulators were responsible for auditing performance of the food safety surveillance. Besides, the authority enforced a maximum residue limit (MRL), the highest amount of pesticide residue that may remain on edamame,” he said.
Then, they immediately made several steps of mitigating, such as hazard anticipation critical points, and tracing the source, even tracking and tracing the sources. Even strict enforcement was made, in which all workers must process edamame by giving out the outfits to be washed and sterilized. “They enforce the rules to prevent Escherichia coli (E. coli) bacterium and pesticide in edamame. Otherwise, our edamame got banned in Japan and we would suffer a big loss,”M he said.
Meanwhile, the first deputy Dean of UNEJ’s medical faculty, dr. Ida Srisurani said that public lectures would be one of the reasons to achieve the target in the long run, to establish the faculty center of excellence for agromedicine in southeast asia. One of the ways, by inviting some experts in the healthcare system from varied specializations and practitioners from various fields which may support the development of agromedicine. Simultaneously, the target was launched to commemorate the 60th anniversary of UNEJ. “What we wish, the lecturers, our students get motivated after they do research on agromedicine which is actually the distinction of UNEJ’s medical faculty,” dr. Ida Srisurani said. (LS/IM)