During the "Tuberculosis Support Program in Indonesia" webinar on Thursday, Health Minister Budi Gunadi Sadikin seeks to have a tuberculosis surveillance program similar to the COVID-19 surveillance program that has been undertaken within the last 15 months.
Through a name and address database, the government can provide and conduct better health service treatment, he explained.
The health service is not solely provided to patients detected to have contracted tuberculosis. However, people having come in close contact with the patients are given tuberculosis prevention therapy, he stated.
According to the Global TB Report 2021, the number of tuberculosis cases in Indonesia was projected to reach 824 thousand.
However, the number of TB patients that have been found, medicated, and reported to the national information system reached only 393,323, or 48 percent.
Some 52 percent of tuberculosis cases have not been found or have been found but not yet reported.
The Health Ministry strives to detect 90 percent of tuberculosis disease cases by 2024, Sadikin noted.
Until September 2022, the ministry recorded that the TB discovery and medication coverage figure reached 39 percent, while the TB medication success figure stood at 74 percent.
The easiest method to boost this figure is by ensuring compliance from all hospitals, public health centers (puskesmas), and clinics. If there are patients identified to have contracted TB, then they should be examined, he stated.
"If they are found positive, please immediately enter the data into the TB application national system," he added.
The ministry has simplified the TB reporting application to facilitate government and private hospitals as well as clinics in registering patients that had contracted tuberculosis.
The ministry cooperates with the State-run Healthcare and Social Security Agency (BPJS Kesehatan) to identify tuberculosis in Indonesia, the minister stated.
If code ICD 10 and ICD 9 are described within BPJS, then the patients would be examined if they have been registered in the ministry's TB database.
Moreover, the ministry has appointed the Persahabatan Central General Hospital (RUSP) as the national respiration center to support TB service in Indonesia, he remarked.
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Translator: Sugiharto P, Fadhli Ruhman
Editor: Rahmad Nasution
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