Government may recognize alternative healer unions

A. Junaidi, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

The ubiquitous traditional healers who often conduct their trade furtively could soon get more freedoms, as the government is mulling over a plan to give them licenses to work openly.

Azrul Azwar, director general of the community health supervisory committee at the Ministry of Health said here on Friday that the government would issue licenses based on recommendations from associations of traditional and alternative healers.

"The centers would recommend to the ministry whether a healer should be given a permit or not," Azrul said.

The government is slated to officially recognize 24 traditional/alternative healer associations throughout the country next month, said the former chairman of the Indonesian Medical Doctors Association (IDI).

The idea to acknowledge the associations so we can supervise and monitor them, hence protecting patients from bogus practitioners.

The country has an estimated total of 280,000 traditional and alternative healers based on a 1997 survey.

The ministry defines the healers based on their skills (such as masseurs), medicinal (such as those that prescribe jamu or other herbal medicine), religious healers (such as kyai or priests) and supernatural healers (paranormal, psychics or those using inner energy such as reiki).

Traditional and alternative healing has for thousands of years been part of life in many of different societies throughout the Indonesian archipelago. When modern doctors were introduced by the Dutch colonial government in the 19th Century, traditional healers were by no means marginalized, because there were not and still are not enough doctors who practice Western medicine in the country. In fact, Indonesia is still desperately short of modern medical doctors.

The 1997 economic crisis, coupled with the rising price of medicines has increased the number of people relying more on affordable alternative healers.

But an interesting trend has been recorded.

"The number of medical people, including doctors, who learn alternative healing, has also been on the increase in recent years," Azrul said.

Separately, Marius Widjajanto, spokesman of the Indonesian Health Consumer Empowerment Foundation, expressed doubts that the government would manage to establish associations of alternative healers.

"It would be difficult to classify them. The paranormal would also be difficult to organize," Marius told The Jakarta Post on Friday.

He also said that the plan to acknowledge the associations would violate Law No. 23/1992 which excludes traditional and alternative healers from the national health system.

Instead of regulating psychics and paranormal healers, Marius said, the government should streamline the chaotic regulations and ethics applied to medical doctors.

Recently, a paranormal healer canceled his plan to build a Rp 10 billion (US$1.1 million) hospital, which he claimed would be the largest in Southeast Asia, because he ran into financial difficulties.

Tb. Barce, head of the Banten branch of the Indonesian Paranormal Association, boasted that the hospital would have been able to treat numerous diseases including people affected by Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS).