Piling Up in Big Cities, Several Community Health Centres in Central Java Lack General Practitioners
The Head of the Central Java Provincial Health Office (Dinkes), Zulfachmi Wahab, has stated that several community health centres (Puskesmas) in Central Java do not have a general practitioner. He acknowledged a concentration of doctors in certain areas, such as Semarang, Solo, and Banyumas.
Zulfachmi revealed that Central Java currently has 883 Puskesmas and 370 hospitals. “There are indeed some Puskesmas that do not have a doctor, but they can still be handled by the district or city,” he said in an interview on Thursday (25/6/2026). He was unable to specify the exact number of Puskesmas lacking a doctor, but conceded, “This will certainly reduce the quality of service.”
According to him, the current number of general practitioners should actually be sufficient to meet the needs of the Puskesmas across the province. “So for Central Java, the problem is not actually the quantity, but the distribution of doctors. They pile up in Semarang, Solo, and Banyumas,” Zulfachmi explained.
Zulfachmi did not deny that there is an income gap between doctors working in big cities and those in the regions, which is a contributing factor to the shortage in certain areas. “It is like where there is sugar, there will be many ants. So there is certainly added value in working in the city compared to the regions,” he said.
To address the shortage of doctors in the regions, he pointed to the existing Indonesian Doctor Internship Programme (PIDI). “Through this programme, we place newly graduated doctors to fill these vacancies. This is fully regulated by the district or city health office,” he stated. Zulfachmi believes the PIDI programme has been quite helpful in achieving a more equitable distribution of doctors. “The coordination function between the provincial and district or city health offices is to evaluate and monitor how to ensure all Puskesmas are staffed. There should not be one Puskesmas with four doctors while another has none,” he said.