Ministry Of Health Intensifies The Discovery Of TB Cases In Indonesia

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JAKARTA - The Indonesian Ministry of Health (Kemenkes) is collaborating with the central and regional governments as well as various health facilities to intensify the discovery of Tuberculosis cases (TBC) as an effort to reduce cases in Indonesia.

"Minister of Health (Menkes) Budi Gunadi Sadikin has increased the target of finding cases to 68,000 cases per month or 17,000 cases per week which were originally 60,000 per month," said Head of the Communication and Information Bureau of the Indonesian Ministry of Health, Siti Nadia Tarmizi when contacted by Antara, in Jakarta, Saturday.

Data from the World Health Organization (WHO) released on November 7, 2023, still places Indonesia at the top two cases of Tuberculosis (TBC) in the world.

Based on data from the Indonesian Ministry of Health, the total number of TB cases in 2023 was 658,543 cases as of November 3, 2023.

Data on the Global TB report on November 7, 2023 showed the percentage of the number of cases in the world, namely India (27 percent), Indonesia (10 percent), China (7.1 percent), the Philippines (7.0 percent), Pakistan (5.7 percent), Nigeria (4.5 percent), Bangladesh (3.6 percent), and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (3.0 percent).

The report informs that TB cases will continue to increase from 10 million people in 2020 to 10.3 million people in 2021 and will rise again to 10.6 million people in 2022.

Siti Nadia said the Ministry of Health would increase the discovery of active TB cases by contact investigations or in the general population and at-risk populations.

Meanwhile, the Ministry of Health will also increase the discovery of passive TB cases with TB screening across all policies or TB status examination units in other comorbid patients, such as People with HIV AIDS (ODHIV), diabetes mellitus, smokers and the elderly.

According to him, the discovery of cases is one way to break the chain of transmission and how to cure TB cases.

"If efforts to find cases and break the TB transmission chain are carried out optimally. And 90 percent of cases in the community are found and treated, it is hoped that in the next few years the TB incident can decrease," he said.

In addition, he said, increasing service access, contribution, collaboration of all health care facilities, both government and private through National Health Insurance (JKN) is one of the keys to financing the treatment of TB cases.