Preventive measures for a healthier Indonesia

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Jakarta, IO – The pandemic has cruelly reminded all stakeholders of the importance of health. No matter what your agenda is, you will never generate, let alone maintain a productive, independent, and fair society. This is why everyone – industrialists, academicians, and common civilians – must all support Health Transformation, for the sake of a healthier Indonesia. 

“As we all know, the trend in communicable diseases has shifted from Covid-19 to older diseases that we thought have become extinct – tuberculosis, HIV, and malaria, as well as incommunicable diseases. We are encouraging corporations to allocate more of their social corporate responsibility funds to health promotional and preventive efforts. If possible, we would like to develop vaccines for all kinds of diseases right here in Indonesia. For that purpose, we might ask major vaccine companies, like AstraZeneca, to bring their technology here,” declared Minister of Health, Budi Gunadi Sadikin, in the press conference for the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) between the Ministry of Health and PT AstraZeneca Indonesia, Monday (20/02/2023). 

The MoU is a follow up of the Parties’ 2017 agreement to work together and achieve Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) for Indonesia. Their agenda is now expanded by setting health promotion efforts in the form of disease prevention, control and management of incommunicable diseases, and better use of technology and digitalization for the national health structure. “We will continue to improve the people’s awareness of the benefit of health promotion and disease prevention by making more efforts geared towards these purposes, including by continuing our Young Health Program, which empowers the young to protect their health and prevent the onset of incommunicable diseases,” declared Sewhan Chon, PT AstraZeneca Indonesia’s President Director. 

Other than the Young Health Program, they also have the 10 Finger campaign against ovarium cancer and the Stop Short-Acting β-agonist (SABA) Inhaler Dependence program. The 10 Finger campaign increases awareness of the six risk factors and four symptoms of ovarium cancer, and the importance of early detection of the disease, while the Stop SABA Campaign aims to increase the awareness of the people in general and asthma patients in particular about the dangers of excessive use of SABA-type inhalers when treating asthma. 

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“We are managing and controlling incommunicable diseases better by regulating them in the National Asthma and Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD) Plan, which is to improve the capacity of 4,000 health workers in treating the two diseases. We are partnering with Indonesia’s medical worker associations and establishing Centers of Excellence, or superior Community Health Centers (Pusat Kesehatan Masyarakat – “Puskesmas”) at municipal and regency level. We also have the Patient Assistant Program (PAP) that helps cancer patients access innovative medication for their conditions, as well as accessing digitized early detection of lung cancer and other incommunicable diseases, using artificial intelligence (AI),” Sewhan said. However, it can never be repeated and emphasized enough that the best healthcare is to preserve and maintain the body’s immunity by adopting a healthy lifestyle, i.e. consuming nutritious foods, perform physical exercise routinely at least 150 minutes a week, have enough rest, stopping smoking and alcohol consumption, and managing stress. (est)