Celebrated annually on 7th April, this year’s World Health Day highlighted a Universal Health Coverage with slogan ‘Health for All’. This is in response of achievement target of health-related sustainable development goals (SDGs). People are encouraged to understand the importance of universal health coverage and health care access.
WHO reports concluded that half of the world’s population still have not received full health care access. About 100 million people were estimated with extreme poverty due to the need to pay for health care. Also for health care, more than 800 million people (almost 12% of world’s population) spent at least 10% of the household budget. As a result, all United Nation members have agreed to achieve universal health coverage by 2030 as a component of SDGs.
Indonesia has committed various strategies to achieve universal health coverage, such as Kartu Indonesia Sehat and quality improvement of National Health Insurance System. They are measured by several indicators. Based on 2016 PPJK Accountability Report, there is one (out of four) indicator which has not met the target. It is the percentage of Penerima Bantuan Iuran (poor citizens) members through Jaminan Kesehatan Nasional (a national health insurance system), which only reached 98.63% of the target of 92.4 million people.
Currently, the challenges for Indonesia to achieve universal health coverage are citizens working on informal sectors and the lacking health care facilities. The former one means they are not included on PBI group and not classified as ‘poor’. However, they are in fact are ‘almost poor’ since they do not get their monthly salary, so they could not pay their insurance’s premium.
Prof. dr. Ali Ghufron Mukti M.Sc., Ph.D., a former vice minister of Health of Indonesia and also an expert of health insurance, expressed his hope that in 2019, all Indonesian citizen’s health care would be covered. But it would be meaningless if the access to health care are still limited. He insisted that all Indonesian citizen, including people of East Indonesia, should have a good access of health care, so that we could avoid such case in Asmat. “All faculty of medicine and health stakeholders in Indonesia have to contribute to a sustainable universal health coverage (JKN KIS) system. Hopefully, it is able to cover all Indonesian citizen and maintaining a good and evidence-based health care”, said dr. Ghufron. (Rasyid/interpreted by Leo)
