Pandemic Experience, PDIP Faction Encourages Domestic Hepatitis Vaccine Production

Illustration/Photo: Antara

JAKARTA - Member of Commission IX of the DPR from the PDIP faction, Rahmad Handoyo, encouraged the government to make new breakthroughs to accelerate the creation and production of domestic vaccines. Including, making a vaccine for acute hepatitis which began to terrorize the people of Indonesia. "To anticipate the mysterious acute hepatitis disease and infectious diseases caused by other viruses, we encourage the government to be more independent and sovereign in the health sector, especially in the creation of vaccines," said Rahmad Handoyo to reporters in Jakarta, Tuesday, May 16. The center said, learning from the experience of handling the COVID-19 pandemic and the emergence of a mysterious acute hepatitis disease, it can be said that Indonesia is late in creating independence in the field of vaccines. process. This condition proves that we are very late in making domestic vaccines because the first, second and almost complete vaccinations, there are only a few vaccinations, namely booster vaccines," he said. Because according to him, science and technology to create vaccines are the same. “Perhaps the problem is the budget. We know, to carry out clinical trials up to the third stage it takes a budget of up to hundreds of billions. Therefore, in the future we will encourage the government to provide budget support," he said. "We as a nation must be able to make our own vaccines, not depending on vaccines from abroad," he continued. Rahmad said there were two real benefits if Indonesia was sovereign and independent in the field of vaccines. First, vaccines can meet the needs of the nation itself so that Indonesia can protect its people early and not depend on vaccines from abroad.

"Second, our foreign exchange budget will be more efficient because we no longer buy vaccines from abroad," he said.

Considering that a large budget is needed to conduct clinical trials of vaccines, he added, it is possible to focus on research first by conducting preclinical trials at the laboratory level which do not require too much money. clinical trials one, two and three because it turns out that the disease can be controlled," he said.

However, according to Rahmad, BRIN must immediately make health research, especially vaccine discovery, a priority. Including immediately accelerating research on acute hepatitis viruses and other diseases. Rahmad hopes that Indonesia will not be late or miss out again in the creation of vaccines such as the discovery of the COVID-19 vaccine. He said, if there was an explosion that manifested itself as a pandemic, then Indonesia as a nation would be ready if it could produce its own vaccine.