Over one third of Indonesians can't afford prescriptions

BANDUNG (JP): Between 30 and 40 percent of Indonesians can no longer buy prescriptions due to the prolonged economic crisis that has resulted in the soaring price of drugs, an expert said on Saturday.

Newly appointed professor at the school of public health of the Bandung-based Padjajaran University, Uton Muchtar Rafei said the price of medicines in Indonesia is uncontrollable, and compared with other countries, much too high.

"Nowadays around 80 million to 90 million Indonesians cannot afford to buy medicine because the drug prices are too high," he said.

The estimate was given in his speech during a ceremony to install him as professor at the state-run university.

Uton is also the regional director of the World Health Organization-South East Asia Region (WHO-SEARO).

Minister of Health Ahmad Sujudi, who was present at the installation ceremony, confirmed Uton's remark.

"The price of generic drugs sold in the market was increased by 24 percent (as of May), so the price of patented drugs will automatically (be raised)."

Sujudi said the price of generic drugs is around one-third of the price of patented drugs.

"Due to budgetary limitations, central government has been unable to counteract rising drug prices with a subsidy," Sujudi confessed.

He said the government had to spend around Rp 1 billion per day to supply food for millions of refugees in many shelters throughout the country due to violence in their areas.

Uton further suggested that the government periodically study and renew the list of drugs most used by the public in order to find a basis to subsidize them.

In Indonesia, the health sector has always been regarded as disadvantageous, not worth investing in, he said, adding the assumption caused the government to allocate a small amount of money to it.

Uton said 75 percent of the costs of the health sector were covered by the private sector and the public, while government contributed a relatively small subsidy.

"And the regional autonomy policy is expected to worsen this situation because health issues have yet to become a major priority for the regional administrations," Uton said.

Therefore, it is also important for the government to raise funds from the public via insurance schemes, he added.

"At present, only around 20 percent of our population has health insurance," he said, adding that such schemes could help reduce the gap between the rich and poor.

Uton stressed that countries like Japan, Germany, South Korea, Chile and Turkey also needed dozens of years to insure their citizens.

"It is not easy, but if we don't start now, when will we?" Uton remarked.(25/emf)