World Bank Steals Again IDR 7 Trillion For Indonesia, To Handle The Pandemic He Says

Illustration. (Photo: Doc. Antara)

JAKARTA - The World Bank's Board of Executive Directors has approved funding of US$500 million or around Rp7 trillion to assist Indonesia in responding to the various threats caused by COVID-19, strengthening the preparedness of the health system, and supporting the government's free vaccination program.

"This funding will help Indonesia deliver vaccines safely and effectively. It will also strengthen the resilience of Indonesia's health sector and increase capacity to respond during and after this pandemic," said World Bank Director for Indonesia and Timor-Leste Satu Kahkonen in Jakarta, quoted from Antara, Friday 18 June.

He explained that this new funding uses a results-based approach to encourage the use of government systems and adds to previous funding, which has been used to support capacity building in terms of patient isolation, availability of critical care facilities, testing capacity, as well as strengthening public risk communication, surveillance and preparedness. pandemic.

"This support from the World Bank together with the support of other international development partners will strengthen the various efforts of the Government of Indonesia to efficiently suppress the impact of the pandemic and improve health care systems and services," he said.

He explained that the new funding will focus on three outcome areas, namely better health service delivery, stronger supervision and quality control in laboratories, and better communication and coordination in emergency response and vaccine delivery.

In addition, this funding will help improve the readiness of hospitals and health service delivery systems, and maintain the continuity of basic health services that are not related to COVID-19, with special attention to the needs of women and vulnerable groups.

Meanwhile, Minister of Health (Menkes) Budi Gunadi Sadikin ensured that this financial assistance could strengthen Indonesia's health system to cope with the COVID-19 pandemic and provide support to affected communities.

"In addition to supporting the government's free vaccination program to reach the entire adult population, this funding will help Indonesia's health system become more resilient and strengthen its surveillance system through testing and tracking of new COVID-19 cases, including by implementing genome surveillance for new variants," said the Minister of Health.

Currently, a better surveillance system and improvement in the quality of government health laboratories will further help increase COVID-19 testing capacity and strengthen the ability to carry out genome surveillance.

Meanwhile, better communication and coordination in emergency response and vaccine delivery will help ensure fair and equitable implementation of priorities in healthcare and vaccine distribution, strengthen vaccine-related logistics and information management systems, and expand public risk communication so that it reaches the entire community.

Indonesia also has a vaccination program that aims to provide free vaccines for all 181.5 million adults. Although it will not be used to procure vaccines, this new funding is designed to strengthen the readiness of the vaccine distribution system and support the overall health care delivery system.

In addition to support from the World Bank, other development partners, including the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), and the German Government KfW, also fund this program, bringing the total financial support to a value of US$1.245 billion or around Rp. 16.8 trillion.