Jakarta, IO – The new curriculum which aims to overcome the shortage of specialists was inaugurated by President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo on Monday (6/5). Jokowi said the program would be carried out in conjunction with PPDS at 24 medical faculties in Indonesia to optimize health equipment, which is already evenly distributed in various regions.
“This morning, I officially launched educational hospital-based specialist medical education as the main organizer,” said Jokowi, per Katadata.
“This [gap] must be filled immediately. Don’t let the equipment that has arrived at the regencies/municipalities become useless because there are no specialist doctors,” said Jokowi.
He also explained that the ratio of doctors to residents was still far from ideal, namely 0.47 out of 1,000. This places Indonesia in 147th place in the world and ninth in ASEAN. According to the Health Ministry, currently Indonesia still lacks 124,000 general practitioners and 29,000 specialists.
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Furthermore, Indonesia will receive a demographic bonus in the next 10-15 years. With 68 percent of the population in the productive age, health becomes a critical aspect that calls for attention.
“Therefore, we really have to seriously prepare this. We have to plan this, we have to overhaul the system,” Jokowi said. (un)