"According to the 2004 World Bank report, the amount of our foreign exchange spent on overseas healthcare was about Rp70 trillion. If the report is true, the figure could now be more than Rp100 trillion per year," Supriyantoro, the ministry`s director general of health effort development, said at the Gadjah Mada University`s medical school here on Friday.
"Most of the Indonesian people who prefer overseas healthcare believe that the quality of foreign hospitals is far better than that of domestic ones," he said.
Actually, the quality of domestic healthcare was not far different from that of foreign one. However, most of domestic hospitals still had many shortcomings in terms of health services and patients` safety, he said.
"So the problem is not about bad treatment but how to improve the existing services," he said.
"The government has made various efforts to improve the quality of health services at each hospital. One of the efforts is encouraging hospitals to apply international quality standard," he said.
Yet, only four of about 1,500 hospitals across the country had applied international quality standards. One of them was Dr Sardjito hospital in Yogyakarta, he said. (*)
Editor: Kunto Wibisono
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