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Government vows to improve health care as Indonesians seek treatment abroad
According to President Joko "Jokowi" Widodo, some 2 million Indonesians leave the country every year seeking medical treatment, costing the country Rp 165 trillion (US$10.6 billion) annually in capital outflows.
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A cancer patient is loaded into a radiotherapy machine by a medical staff member in the state-run Cipto Mangunkusumo Hospital in Central Jakarta. The hospital has cooperated with United States-based medical technology company Varian to set up the new equipment in its radiotherapy center. (Courtesy of/Varian)
T
he government is seeking to improve the country’s healthcare infrastructure and increase the number of medical specialists in the country as high costs and poor-quality care drive millions of Indonesians to seek medical services abroad.
Health Ministry spokesperson Siti Nadia Tarmizi said that the government was currently trying to improve medical infrastructure and increase the number of healthcare professionals to ensure better-quality care for all people and reduce outbound medical tourism.
"We are trying to ensure that [government-owned] hospitals in all regencies and provinces can provide treatments for common chronic and deadly illnesses such as cancer, cardiovascular and kidney diseases so that patients will not need to wait for a long time or travel a long distance to receive care," Nadia said on Wednesday.
Nadia added that the ministry had launched various programs to prevent illnesses, promote a healthy lifestyle and improve early detection.
The ministry, for example, is in the process of distributing 10,000 ultrasound machines to community health centers (Puskesmas) across the country, which aside from examining pregnancies could be used for breast and cervical cancer detection.
It is also in the process of procuring hundreds of computerized tomography (CT) scanners and some 10,000 hematology analyzers to run blood tests and detect various diseases.
