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INDONESIA mandates a minimum of 5% of the budget for health, but does not necessarily guarantee that building a national health system is easy.
According to the Minister of Finance, Sri Mulyani Indrawati in an online discussion in Jakarta, Wednesday (9/1), the global economy has lost US$2.5 trillion due to the COVID-19 pandemic which has suppressed people’s mobility. In terms of economic contraction, minus 3% of GDP means an economic loss of around US$2.5 trillion.
“The global countercyclical measures to reduce the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic are US$11 trillion. The budget is used to protect the public, stabilize the implications of the social impact of COVID-19 and restore the economy,” said Minister Sri Mulyani.
She emphasized that a country, even a developed and strong one, would not be able to fight the pandemic independently, so collaboration and coordination of all countries was needed. The conditions needed by each country to be able to suppress pandemic cases are to have a good and reliable health system.
“On the other hand, creating a good health system is not easy to realize because it requires various resources such as budget, quality of health personnel, as well as incentives, so that people can get easy access. Indonesia mandates a minimum of 5% of the budget for health, but it does not necessarily guarantee that building a national health system is easy,” Sri Mulyani stated.
Not only that, she continued, the readiness of the pharmaceutical industry and the government’s ability to attract the private sector to contribute to financing health services are also important aspects. Actually, there is a lot of knowledge that can be learned from developed countries on how to build good and healthy health services in the country.
In addition, she added that the role of multilateral institutions such as the WHO and the World Bank is also a very important aspect to create a good health system, including providing access to a COVID-19 vaccine.
“They have the knowledge and capacity building to be able to provide technical assistance to many countries, especially developing countries. Sometimes even developed countries don’t necessarily have a good health system,” Sri Mulyani concluded. [antaranews/photo special]
