The joint statement was the outcome of a Senior Officials Meeting (SOM) which was held in Jakarta from Thursday to Friday, February 24-25, 2011.
Indonesian Health Minister Endang Rahayu Sedyaningsih said here on Friday the cooperation between Indonesia and Malaysia covered communicable disease control, complimentery and traditional medication, supervision of drug and cosmetic products, food product safety and quality control, improvement in health-related human resources, health research, and other areas that would be agreed upon later.
"As a follow-up, we are going to sign a memorandum of understanding (MoU) as a legal umbrella for the cooperation in the health sector between the governments of Indonesia and Malaysia," Endang said, adding that discussions on the MoU were expected to be completed in a year.
She said the senior officials meeting was the second bilateral gathering of Indonesia and Malaysia after the one in 2004, and the third was scheduled to be held in 2013.
Meanwhile, Dato` Sri Liow Tiong Lai, a Malaysian politician who is currently serving as health minister in the Malaysian cabinet, said he was of the opinion that such a cooperation should be stepped up.
He is concurrently the deputy president of the Malaysian Chinese Association (MCA), a major component of the Barisan Nasional ruling coalition.
"We need the improvement of our cooperation in communicable disease control and we also want cooperation in terms of traditional medicine practice and complementary from Indonesia," he said.
Besides, Malaysia also emphasizes on hard drugs registration cooperation in each country as supervision.
"There are 54 kinds of hard drugs that we want registered in Indonesia," Tiong Lai said, adding that Indonesia and Malaysia would also step up cooperation in health personnel and joint doctors training for the transfer of knowledge.
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Editor: Jafar M Sidik
Copyright © ANTARA 2011
