This is mostly in PapuaJakarta (ANTARA) - The Indonesian Health Ministry is planning to build 67 Public Health Centers (Puskesmas) in 2022 to plug the shortage of health center, mostly in Papua, an official has informed.
The ministry will also ensure that all sub-districts of Indonesia have at least one Puskesmas, Director General of Health Services at the ministry Abdul Kadir informed at the first virtual conference of the executive board of the Indonesian Medical Association (PB IDI) on Thursday.
The plan is based on the finding that as many as 171 sub-districts in Indonesia do not have medical facilities such as Puskesmas due to regional expansion, he said.
"This is mostly in Papua. In the past, each sub-district had at least one Puskesmas, but due to regional expansion, one sub-district could expand into three or even four sub-districts with no Puskesmas support," he added.
However, the government faced a problem in meeting the vacancy for health workers at the Puskesmas, Kadir said.
"In reality, HR (human resources) is still a problem. We are asking PB IDI for help to solve this problem," he informed.
Public Health Centers are included in primary services in the priority health reform programs in Indonesia, he said.
All Puskesmas in Indonesia will return to their function as community health service centers by increasing promotive and preventive activities, he added.
"So far, Puskesmas have mostly acted as small hospitals, in the future there will be more promotional and preventive functions. We will reduce the curative (role) to 30 percent and 70 percent will be promotive and preventive. We will redistribute the curative to main and primary private clinics and individual practices so that the burden on Puskesmas can be reduced," he explained.
In the future, Puskesmas officers will focus more on outdoor activities to disseminate information on disease prevention in the community, Kadir said.
In addition, the Health Ministry will also fulfill the need for digital-based medical work tools to ease reporting on the entire process of early disease prevention to the central government through an integrated system, he added.
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Translator: Andi Firdaus, Resinta S
Editor: Sri Haryati
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