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Healthcare focus 'should shift to noncommunicable diseases'
Indonesia has seen a growing prevalence of noninfectious chronic illnesses, as revealed by the 2018 Basic Health Research (Riskesdas) report.
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The Health Care and Social Security Agency (BPJS Kesehatan) requires National Health Insurance (JKN) participants to, in some cases, obtain referrals from community health centers (Puskesmas) or clinics to be eligible for hospital checkups. (Antara/Yulius Satria Wijaya)
T
he government and private sector should start working together in addressing the significantly increasing prevalence of noncommunicable diseases, an executive at the World Bank's private-sector arm, the International Finance Corporation (IFC), has said.
IFC's global head of health and education, Elena Sterlin, said governments around the world, including in Indonesia, should take the leading role in shifting the healthcare focus from communicable diseases to noncommunicable diseases, such as diabetes and cancer, which have raised serious concerns in recent years.
Indonesia has seen a growing prevalence of noninfectious chronic illnesses, as revealed by the 2018 Basic Health Research (Riskesdas) report.
According to the report, the prevalence of cancer increased to 1.8 percent in 2018 from 1.4 percent in 2013, diabetes mellitus to 8.5 percent from 6.9 percent, strokes to 10.9 percent from 7 percent and chronic kidney disease to 8.5 percent from 6.9. Adult obesity, one of the risk factors of noncommunicable diseases, has also doubled in 10 years, affecting about one-fifth of the population aged over 18.
"Treating chronic diseases is not necessarily just about building more hospitals. A lot of chronic diseases are treated with outpatient treatments. If these people have diabetes, they need to have regular monitoring [...] The most important thing is to set up outpatient clinics," Elena said in a closed interview session in Jakarta on Friday.
She said the clinics needed to be specialized for a certain disease only, which aimed to prevent patients from entering the complication state or from being hospitalized. "Sugar clinics" emerging in foreign countries were one example, she said, referring to clinics specialized in controlling diabetes patients. Such specialization would also help healthcare facilities reduce their costs, Elena said.
"There needs to be a system created for ongoing diagnosis and monitoring, and then you create basic hospitals and more complex ones, so it's more like a 'feeder system' [...] It's a very nice way of channeling the patients to the right level of care," she added.
