Minister promotes healthy lifestyle
Minister promotes healthy lifestyle
JAKARTA (JP): Preventing an illness is better than curing it,
Minister of Health Faried Anfasa Moeloek said on Monday, in a
speech that was part of a campaign to promote healthy living.
Addressing the 15th anniversary of Open University (UT) in
Ciputat subdistrict, some 15 kilometers south of Jakarta, he said
the health ministry would therefore no longer suggest a curative,
but a preventive approach to health care.
"The illness-prevention paradigm focuses its approach on
healthy people. It encourages people to be self-reliant and take
care of their health with higher awareness," he said.
The minister emphasized the importance of a shift in the
health paradigm, saying that the investment and necessary
government intervention needed to keep people healthy was more
cost-effective than it was to cure sick people.
"When compared with the curative approach in the past, people
went to see the doctor and looked for medical treatment after
they got sick," he said.
While suggesting a long-term campaign process, he emphasized
the importance of including the new paradigm in school curricula.
"Public understanding of the Healthy Paradigm requires good
public education, including health education," he said, quoting
the 1997 Jakarta Declaration on Health Promotion.
About 500 UT students from Jakarta, Bogor, Tangerang, Bekasi
and Bandung attended the occasion. Similar activities were also
held in other cities where the university has offices. UT has
about 360,000 students, including several students studying
abroad.
Responding to the minister's statement, UT's deputy rector for
cooperation affairs Asmawi Zainal said the university is obliged
to include material on public health in its lesson modules.
"The students could then disseminate the public health
policies to the people," Asmawi said.
"This would be one of our contributions to the country,
especially in increasing public awareness."
Acknowledging that most UT students belong to Indonesia's
middle and lower socioeconomic groups, he said this would make
the dissemination of information more effective.
"(The students) usually have great influence on their
surroundings," Asmawi said.
More experts
The minister said health promotion and development would also
require more experts on nutrition, hygiene, health law and health
management.
"We only have 3,000 such experts, while we need a total of
22,500 experts," Moeloek said.
He cited the importance of having experts that could extract
bioactive substances from herbs.
"We'll pay more attention on the development of Indonesian
jamu (herbal medicine)," he said. "If we could extract the
bioactive substances from the herbs, we could use jamu to cure
sicknesses."
He said the Ministry of Health had developed a social health
insurance scheme, aimed not only at curing sick people, but also
at making sure healthy people remain healthy. (05)