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Batan, UI to build center on nuclear medicine
The National Nuclear Energy Agency (Batan) has announced its plan to build a medical physics center at the University of Indonesia (UI) Depok, West Java, campus
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he National Nuclear Energy Agency (Batan) has announced its plan to build a medical physics center at the University of Indonesia (UI) Depok, West Java, campus.
Batan chairman, Hudi Hastowo, said the project, in cooperation with the UI and International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), would start in 2012 and aim at assisting Indonesian cancer treatment centers with the provision of the highest quality treatment for their radiation therapy patients through education, research and clinical application of physics and biology.
Nuclear medicine: Employees use a nuclear medicine machine in this photo released to the media in 2007. Nuclear technology is used in the healthcare system to provide medical imaging to detect the progress of diseases in the body. Philips via Bloomberg News
The program on nuclear technology for medicine would be a graduate program, Hudi said.
He said Batan also planned to build a second International Center for Theoretical Physics in order to foster the growth of advanced studies and research in physical science.
The first international center is located in the city of Trieste, Italy, and was founded in 1964 by Pakistani scientist and Nobel Laureate Abdus Salam.
Nuclear is not only about the controversial power plants or the much-feared weapons but it can have a good impact on society and also save lives, say IAEA nuclear scientists.
Deputy director general of nuclear sciences and applications of IAEA, Daud Mohammad, said in Jakarta that nuclear energy could benefit the medical, industry, food, environment, water resources and agriculture sectors.
The IAEA is an international organization under the United Nations that seeks to promote the peaceful use of nuclear energy, and inhibit its use for any military purpose, including nuclear weapons.
Daud pointed to examples of the benefits in the agriculture sector that could increase the productivity of farmers and rice, and in medical sectors that could help treat certain diseases.
“For example, X-rays. Sometimes people don’t recognize that an X-ray is nuclear technology,” Daud told reporters at a press conference in South Jakarta.
Rethy Chhem, director of the IAEA human health division, said there were a lot of nuclear medicine technologies that could help save people’s lives, such as X-rays and CT Scans to construct detailed pictures of structures inside the body, mammography to examine breast cancer, radiotherapy that ionizes radiation or radioactive substances to treat diseases, and chemotherapy to treat cancer.
Nuclear medicine technology is the medical specialty concerned with the use of safe and small amounts of radioactive material for diagnostic, therapeutic and research purposes.
The director of the joint Food and Agriculture Organization and IAEA, Qu Liang, said nuclear technology could increase crop activities, improving water and soil in agriculture production through radioisotope technology.
He said Indonesia was an Asian country that was successful in using nuclear technology in that sector. (drs)
