The numbers don’t lie: Indonesia’s public health and medical research is in need of help. On the Human Development Index, Indonesia ranks 107 of 185. To lift its ranking and deliver better health outcomes for the population, Indonesia would have to better provide preventative, curative and rehabilitative healthcare to its population — and that work has to begin with the research community. Medical research in Indonesia is limited by a variety of factors, but one that looms large is the issue of access. A country of 17,508 islands, Indonesia has just 10,205 Community Health Centres (known as puskemas) with only 4,119 offering in-patient facilities. This would average out to one in four islands having an on-shore puskesmas if centres were evenly distributed, which they are not (on account of Indonesia’s complicated geography and harder-to-access terrain on some islands).
This leads to a host of issues. Most immediately, many Indonesians lack accessible healthcare. Medical research, the backbone of public health development, is also greatly underserved, as it becomes much harder to access and study in the most at-risk, in-need regions.
A fundamental component to any research project is access to electricity — it is difficult to make groundbreaking medical discoveries if it’s a struggle to keep the lights on and computers running.
