Indonesia seeks billions to improve health and lifespans
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Indonesia’s Health Minister Budi Gunadi Sadikin announced the country needs an additional US$27 billion to fully transform its health system.
He explained this investment aims to increase the average life expectancy to 76 years and healthy life expectancy to 65 years for Indonesian citizens. The total transformation requires US$223 billion, with US$203 billion already secured through government funding and existing programs. Sadikin detailed recent improvements made possible by international collaboration.
In one year, the ministry distributed 300,000 anthropometric devices, tools for measuring human body size, to health posts across Indonesia’s many islands. They also sent 10,000 ultrasound machines to community health centers, greatly increasing access to this technology which was previously available in only 22 percent of these centers. The ministry plans further expansion of diagnostic tools, aiming to distribute 2,000 X-ray machines by 2026 and 4,000 more in 2027 for tuberculosis screening.
Additionally, Indonesia is equipping health centers with terminals for rapid, on-site testing to quickly identify infectious diseases. The country also launched a program offering free health checks to prevent serious non-communicable diseases and is developing genomic testing to better understand population health.
