Minister Of Health Terawan: 23,145 Health Workers Have Been Trained To Inject The COVID-19 Vaccine

JAKARTA - Minister of Health (Menkes) Terawan Agus Putranto said as many as 23 thousand health workers had been trained to inject the COVID-19 vaccine against hundreds of millions of Indonesian citizens.

"Currently trained vaccinators through the ToT (Trainee of Trainer) program are 23,145 health workers from health centers with a ratio of 1:20 and network expansion by adding service sessions can increase the ratio to 1:40," said Terawan in a working meeting with Commission IX. at the DPR building, Senayan, Central Jakarta, Tuesday, November 17.

Terawan said the number of people targeted to receive the COVID-19 vaccine reached 67 percent of the 160 million population in Indonesia.

The criteria for vaccine recipients are aged 16 to 59 years, healthy without comorbid diseases, pregnant women, and those already infected with COVID-19 according to the recommendation of the Indonesia Technical Advisory Group on Immunization (ITAGI).

Meanwhile, the implementation is carried out with two schemes, namely program vaccines and independent vaccines.

The vaccine program will later be given to health workers, public servants such as airport, port, fire fighters to law enforcement officials such as the Indonesian National Police, and BPJS participants.

"This vaccine program targets 32,185,276 people who need it with 73,664,035 doses," explained the former Head of the Gatot Subroto Army Hospital.

As for the independent vaccine, the target is 75 million people with a total of 172 million doses and will be given to the public and other economic actors.

In addition, Terawan also explained about the distribution of the COVID-19 vaccine to various regions in Indonesia.

Later, the vaccines will be distributed according to the immunization stages that have been routinely running. From the center, the vaccines will be distributed to vaccine warehouses at the provincial health office to be distributed to various districts and cities.

"From the district / city health office, it is forwarded to the puskesmas according to the availability of vaccines and the capacity of the cold chain vaccine storage facilities at the service level," said Terawan.

"To improve the service network, the puskesmas will be able to collaborate with other health services in their working areas, government hospitals, private hospitals and so on," he concluded.