Indonesia Has More Than 200 Pharmaceutical Industries, How Come 90 Percent Of Raw Materials Are Brought From Overseas?

Illustration. Health Center officers provide medicine to Indonesian migrant workers who have just been deported from Malaysia/DOK ANTARA

JAKARTA - Director of Pharmacy and Health Resilience of the Ministry of Health (Kemenkes) of the Republic of Indonesia (RI), Roy Hilmawan said, Indonesia in the procurement of medicines still depends a lot from abroad.

"We can report that for our own medicines, although we have a total pharmaceutical industry of more than 200 and more than 4 vaccine industries, our dependence on imported medicinal raw materials products is still quite large," said Roy Hilmawan during a webinar discussion organized by the BRIN Center for Testing and Standard Technology Research (PRTPS) online, Antara, Tuesday, November 19.

According to him, Indonesia still needs about 90 percent of raw materials for medicines and medical devices used for the health industry in the country to be imported from abroad.

This is still a weakness for the health industry in Indonesia. That way, his party is still working hard to break the chain of imports of raw materials for medicines that come from outside Indonesia.

Various facilities owned by Indonesia still cannot support the various needs of medicines and medical devices used in Indonesia which are expected to optimize the development of the health industry.

Indonesia is home to 800 health industries, Indonesia also has 70 clinical trial facilities in hospitals, laboratories and clinics that can be used for health development. Indonesia also has more than 200 health education every year," he explained.

Until now, his party noted that imported goods for medical equipment needs reached 55 thousand types. Meanwhile, Indonesia itself can only provide 45 thousand types of medical device products.

"So we have a position of 30 percent lower than imported medical devices. And of course this also shows how much our health industry still needs to be built," he said.

Therefore, the opening of collaboration rooms from various parties makes the Ministry of Health's confidence to be able to lead to independence in providing medical devices and also raw materials for medicines very possible.