Indonesia becomes third nation to test 100-day vaccine target for new pandemic mitigation
The Ministry of Health, in partnership with the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI), held a preparedness simulation to face the threat of a new pandemic or ‘Disease X’ through a Tabletop Exercise (TTX) titled the 100-Day Mission.
The 100-Day Mission is an ambitious global target designed to drastically reduce vaccine development time, enabling an earlier vaccine response to prevent further disease spread.
Speaking in Jakarta on Friday, Minister of Health Budi Gunadi Sadikin stated that pandemic preparedness must be viewed as being on par with national defence investment. He noted that history proves deadly disease outbreaks are capable of paralysing global populations more severely than armed conflicts.
“Pandemics have claimed more lives than wars. The Black Death outbreak is estimated to have killed around 200 million people, more than the casualties of World War II. Therefore, we must invest in health much like we do in defence to save lives,” said Minister Budi.
Participants analysed a fictional scenario involving a ‘Nipah-X’ outbreak, a mutated pathogen that can cause death and is transmitted from livestock to humans through direct contact. The pathogen was also depicted as being capable of human-to-human transmission, with the potential to cause a pandemic.
The two-day simulation involved over 120 experts from various ministries, agencies, academia, industry, research institutions, and regulatory authorities.
To achieve the 100-day target, Indonesia is currently integrating an early detection ecosystem, ranging from the development of portable Point-of-Care Testing (POCT) devices in primary healthcare services to increasing genome sequencing capacity across various regions.
Regarding production self-sufficiency, the government is also collaborating with national vaccine producers, such as PT Bio Farma, PT Etana Biotechnologies Indonesia, and PT Biotis Pharmaceuticals, to ensure readiness for mass manufacturing in the event of a pandemic.
“Indonesia is a strategic partner of CEPI. Simulations like this help build relationships and operational readiness, as well as identify gaps that must be closed so that the response to the next outbreak can be much faster,” said Hatchett.
Meanwhile, the Head of the Indonesian Food and Drug Authority (BPOM), Taruna Ikrar, guaranteed that the acceleration of emergency vaccine discovery would not compromise patient safety standards. BPOM is currently refining conditional approval schemes to complement the Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) mechanism.
“The acceleration of innovation must go hand-in-hand with meeting safety, quality, and efficacy standards. Acceleration must not mean compromising those standards,” said Taruna.
This 100-Day Mission simulation makes Indonesia the third country in the world, after South Korea and Rwanda, to directly test its comprehensive pandemic response chain alongside CEPI, ranging from biosurveillance to medical logistics distribution.