Invest more in health: Minister

JAKARTA: Local administrations have been asked to focus their health development programs on services for mothers, children and poor families.

They should also pay attention to health problems caused by disasters, Health Minister Siti Fadilah Supari told a media conference Tuesday on the sidelines of a two-day national meeting on health planning for 2007.

""We're still far from meeting the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). The infant mortality rate and maternal mortality rate, for instance, are still high,"" she said.

She also implored the regions to increase their health budgets. Many regions still set their spending at only US$4 per capita annually, while the World Health Organization (WHO) suggests a minimum of $12 per capita.

""Limited budgets are one thing, but even these small budgets have not been managed well. Up to August, only 30 percent of the 2006 health budget in the regions had been used,"" Siti said, saying the bureaucracy is part of the problem with budget reimbursement and usage. --JP