Ministry Of Health Collaborates With Ministry Of Education And Culture To Pursue WHO Standards On The Number Of Doctors In Indonesia

JAKARTA - The Ministry of Health (Kemenkes) in collaboration with the Ministry of Education, Culture, Research and Technology (Kemendikbudristek) is pursuing the number of doctors in Indonesia according to World Health Organization or WHO standards.

The Minister of Health said that the need for doctors in Indonesia is still below the WHO standard, which is 1/1,000 of the population.

"Currently the number of doctors needed in Indonesia is around 270 thousand, while currently there are only 140 thousand. This means that there is still a shortage of doctors as many as 130 thousand," he said in a written statement, Tuesday, July 12.

He added that the condition is that the number of medical graduates in Indonesia per year is only 12 thousand. It took at least 10 years or more to catch up with the minimum number of doctors according to WHO standards to serve 270 million Indonesians.

"Health transformation makes Indonesian people healthy, including the fulfillment of doctors. WHO recommends the fulfillment of doctors for 1/1,000 of the Indonesian population," he said.

Mendikbudristek Nadiem Makarim said that to accelerate the fulfillment of human resources for doctors in Indonesia, a bigger transformation initiative was needed through increasing the capacity of medical faculties, producing doctors and specialists to strengthen primary, secondary, and tertiary services.

"We are working on this by a joint committee of the Ministry of Education and Culture and the Ministry of Health through an academic health system that prioritizes educational collaboration," he said.

One of the agreements agreed was to increase the quota for medical undergraduate student admissions. Nadiem assesses that this is the basic principle of health transformation.

As a follow-up, based on Antara's report, a Joint Decree was signed on Increasing the Quota of Student Admissions for the Bachelor of Medicine Program, Specialist Doctor Program, and Addition of Specialist Doctoral Study Programs through the Academic Health System between the Ministry of Health and the Ministry of Education and Culture in Jakarta, today, Tuesday 12 July .

Nadiem said his party was committed to accelerating the fulfillment of lecturers from teaching hospitals with various initiatives, including seeking to accelerate the proposal for special lecturer identification numbers (NIDK).

This includes, he continued, giving assignments and technical guidance to universities that are tasked with opening new specialist doctor study programs, and providing LPDP scholarships for specialist doctor program students.

The Ministry of Education and Culture will strengthen the policy of the student selection system and guarantee the quality of graduation through competency tests according to national medical education standards.

In addition, formulating policies to ensure compliance with medical students with joint committees, especially for protection from all forms of sexual and bullying.

The policy also regulates workloads, as well as providing incentives for specialist doctor program students who support services in teaching hospitals.