Prabowo Revision Of Presidential Regulation For TB Management, TNI-Polri Will Be Involved

Deputy Minister of Health Benjamin Paulus Octavianus when meeting with DKI Jakarta Governor Pramono Anung at DKI Jakarta City Hall/PHOTO: Diah Ayu-VOI

JAKARTA - The government is preparing to revise Presidential Regulation (Perpres) Number 67 of 2021 concerning Tuberculosis Management (TBC) which will be signed by President Prabowo Subianto in the near future.

In the revision of the presidential regulation, Prabowo will increase the number of ministries and institutions involved. Law enforcement officers, namely the TNI and Polri, will also be deployed in future TB prevention efforts.

This was conveyed by Deputy Health Minister Benjamin Paulus Octavianus when he met the Governor of DKI Jakarta, Pramono Anung, at the DKI Jakarta City Hall.

"Currently we are forming a new Presidential Decree for the revision of the Presidential Decree. Revision of Presidential Decree 67 of 2021 will be changed because it previously involved 15 ministries to 35 ministries and agencies including the TNI, Polri," said Benjamin, Thursday, November 13.

Benjamin revealed that Indonesia is still the country with the second highest number of TB sufferers in the world after India. Currently, 10 percent of the total global TB cases are in Indonesia.

"We are now the country with the number 2 most TB diseases in the world. 10 percent of TB disease in the world exists in Indonesia. Therefore, we want to become a developed country, this TB must be eradicated," he said.

He said the increase in TB cases had occurred during the COVID-19 pandemic due to the large number of patients who were not treated. Benjamin said TB was the cause of death that was often ignored. In fact, the number of deaths exceeded COVID-19.

"So in 2020 to 2021, TB cases rose from 700 thousand to around 800 thousand. At that time COVID was a lot of people who didn't get treatment, so the cases went up," he explained.

In 2022, the number of cases found reached around 850 thousand, while patients who were successfully treated increased from 400 thousand to 600 thousand. Then, this year, TB cases were recorded at around 1.09 million cases.

"Today we have treated 700 thousand. We hope that by the end of the year it can reach 900 thousand," said Benjamin.

The government targets Indonesia to significantly reduce the number of TB cases by 2030 according to the request of the World Health Organization (WHO).

According to Benjamin, eradicating TB is not enough just with medical treatment. Nutrition, socio-economic, and environmental factors must also be handled simultaneously. He said, TB cases also occur more in slum areas.

In his meeting with Pramono, Benjamin said that Jakarta would become a pilot area to strengthen the TB case handling and reporting system.

The DKI Provincial Government, he said, is preparing support through health workers and cadres in the field, namely the White Forces to accelerate the discovery and treatment of TB cases.

"We had a meeting to fight for it and earlier I was happy that the Governor was willing to DKI where we could experiment, all of them were supported. So that the (handling) of the TB case in DKI, the city is good, it's clear, there are many doctors, there are lots of nurses," concluded Benjamin.