Good News From Minister Of Health Budi! TBC Vaccine Ready For 3rd Phase Clinical Trial

Indonesian Minister of Health Budi Gunadi Sadikin. (ANTARA/HO-Biro Press Setpres/Muchlis

Minister of Health Budi Gunadi Sadikin said the vaccine to treat tuberculosis (TBC) currently has its development and is ready to enter the third phase of clinical trials. The Indonesian government has proposed to be involved in clinical trial activities to the philanthropic foundation Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF) and Welcome Trust. "Indonesia proactively also proposes that it can be a location where this clinical trial can occur, so that we will get the right to access them for the first time," he said in a webinar entitled "The Tuberculosis Confiscation Program in Indonesia" which was monitored in Jakarta, Antara, Thursday, October 20. The Indonesian government is committed to achieving the elimination of tuberculosis by 2030 with a target incident rate of 65 per 100 thousand residents with a death rate of six per 100 thousand inhabitants. Based on the 2021 Global TB Report, the number of tuberculosis cases in Indonesia is projected to reach 824 thousand cases. However, TB patients who were found, treated, and reported to the national information system were only 393,323 or 48 percent. The remaining 52 percent of TB cases have not been found or have been found, but have not been reported. The Ministry of Health is trying to detect 90 percent of cases of tuberculosis by 2024. As of September 2022, the Ministry of Health noted that the number of TB discovery and treatment coverage was 39 percent (a target of one year TC 90 percent) and a success rate of TB treatment of 74 percent (a target of SR 90 percent). Budi said the Indonesian government continues to strive to tackle potentially serious infectious bacteria that affect the lungs, ranging from surveillance programs that store data on the names and addresses of positive TB patients, simplifying reporting applications, cooperation with BPJS Kesehatan, to hospital treatment programs. "Hopefully with these steps we can be faster than the 2030 target to control this tuberculosis and the Indonesian people are much healthier," he concluded.