Minister Of Health Ensures Availability Of Medical Devices 100% Domestic Production

Minister of Health Budi Gunadi Sadikin/DOK ANTARA

SOLO - Minister of Health Budi Gunadi Sadikin ensures the availability of medical devices (alkes) that have been produced 100 percent domestically, so there is no need to import or bring in from abroad.

"Alkes that have been produced by themselves and have been closed for import are 100 percent, namely patient beds in hospitals," said the Minister of Health at the Facilitation for the Development of MSME Production Alkes for National Medical Devices Resilience, in Solo, as reported by ANTARA, Friday, 19 August.

"So the import of beds in hospitals has been closed for 100 percent. The production of local beds is really sophisticated, it can be adjusted to move up and down by electricity. Including molds, 100 percent of local production in the country," said the Minister of Health.

In addition, said the Minister of Health, his party is also preparing the procurement of 300 thousand domestic anthropometry which is a tool to measure the length of the baby, the height of the child, and the weight of the baby for the stunting program at 300 thousand Posyandu throughout Indonesia.

Previously, the anthropometry was obtained through imports of good quality. However, experts from universities such as UI, ITB, and UGM then sat down together to design the tool, so that currently there is no need to import it.

The Minister of Health said that there are three major programs in the transformation of health resilience. Namely the provision of medical equipment, medicines, and health reserve personnel. The point is, if there is another pandemic, a country as big as Indonesia cannot depend on other countries.

"We felt the pandemic yesterday. It was difficult to find personal protective equipment (PPE). Even though our country has a lot of people. We want to make sure there is a program for back-up health workers and medicines must be ready, where medical equipment must also be ready," said the Minister of Health. .

The Minister of Health said the government could also prepare for the involvement of MSMEs in the procurement of around 50 to 60 percent of the production of medicines and medical equipment from upstream to downstream, domestically.

Especially for sophisticated medical devices, such as CT Scan which is not owned by Indonesia, the solution can be to invite technology owners to want to produce domestically. Investors can come to build factories here because Indonesia has a potential of 270 million, compared to only 5 million in Singapore.

"That's why we launched a program like this. For MSME friends, how much is 50-60 percent. Indonesia spends about US$112 per person per person for health. The average life span is 72 years. Malaysia per person 423 US dollars, the average age of life is 76 years," said the Minister of Health.

Meanwhile, the Minister of Cooperatives and Small and Medium Enterprises (UKM) Teten Masduki said that MSMEs must gradually be able to meet the needs of medical devices by replacing imported products with domestic products.

"We can start with simple technology medical devices. However, medium and high technology medical devices can already be done. We have just visited ATMI Solo, and Polytechnics that can become partners, then medical equipment production can be MSMEs," said Teten.

Teten said that the financing ecosystem had been provided. For this, later we can collaborate with the Minister of Health, which medical devices can be produced domestically.