Indonesia faces doctor shortage: official

Source:Xinhua Published: 2013-3-27 19:29:14

Indonesia's Health Deputy Minister Ali Ghufron Mukti said on Wednesday that the country is facing shortages of doctors as the number licensed doctors unable to reach the ideal ratio of 1:2,500.

"The ideal ratio requires one doctor serves 2,500 people. If we want to attain that ratio we must have 101,040 licensed doctors, while in the fact we only have 88,309 of them at this moment," Ali said, hinting that there could be a system that needs to be improved to address this issue.

He added that government and legislators are now discussing a bill that would regulate the health education system in the country, expected to be endorsed by the parliament in April this year.

The bill is highly expected to help address the country's doctor shortage problem, he said, quoted by the Antara news agency.

Assuming the country's population at 250 million people, Ribka Tjiptaning, a legislator at Commission IX in the parliament that supervises the government's health policies said that a doctor in Indonesia is now serving 3,500 people.

The ratio was far different from those in Cuba and the United States where a doctor serves 150 people and four people respectively, she said.

Posted in: Fitness

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