23
Jan

Despite its upper middle-income status, high prioritization of health expenditure in recent years, and dramatic achievements in expanding social health insurance coverage, Indonesia’s health sector remains a developmental enigma. The country faces persisting challenges of maternal mortality and communicable diseases, struggles with improving child health and nutrition outcomes, and grapples with the increasing burden of chronic lifestyle related diseases. Similar to other large, decentralized contexts, Indonesia also needs to address substantial regional disparities in access to and quality of essential health services.

Spurred by an exceptional degree of support from the highest levels of Government leadership and building on the rapid rollout of COVID-19 vaccines, as well as the subsequent economic recovery, the Government of Indonesia (GoI), though the Ministry of Health (MoH), has initiated a historic set of reforms, designed to radically transform the country’s health system, with the overarching objective of creating a “healthy, productive, independent and just Indonesian society.”

Key among these is Indonesia’s “Health System Transformation Agenda” (HSTA), which centers on six pillars—primary care, secondary care, health resilience, health financing and system, health workforce, and health technology—and aims to establish a well-structured public health system that integrates and standardizes all levels of public health facilities and laboratories. The HSTA is further anchored in the country’s Primary Health Care (PHC) Integration initiative, also known as Integrasi Pelayanan Kesehatan Primer (ILP), which is premised on the need to adapt PHC service delivery to the country’s epidemiologic transition, standardizing service packages for all beneficiaries and shift the emphasis from public health programs to a patient-centered, life cycle approach.