Profile of Dr Piprim Basarah, Dismissed by Health Minister Budi Gunadi
Jakarta, VIVA – Paediatric cardiac consultant and Chairman of the Indonesian Paediatric Association (IDAI), Dr Piprim Basarah Yunarso, has claimed that he was dismissed by Health Minister Budi Gunadi Sadikin. The statement was made by Dr Piprim on his personal Instagram account on Sunday evening, 15 February 2026.
“I have finally been dismissed by the Health Minister, Budi Gunadi Sadikin,” he said, as quoted from his Instagram account on Monday, 16 February 2026.
In the video, Piprim explained that two months before being forcibly transferred by the Director General of Advanced Health Services at the Ministry of Health, Dr Azhar Jaya, he had been summoned by a senior professor. The senior colleague conveyed that if he refused to cooperate with the collegium currently operating under the Ministry of Health, he could be transferred.
At the time, he said he was merely carrying out the mandate of the National Congress of Paediatric Medicine in Semarang, which had resolved that the Indonesian Paediatric Collegium must remain independent.
“He told me, ‘Prim, if you refuse to cooperate with the collegium established by the Health Minister, you will be transferred,’ whereas I was only carrying out the mandate of the National Congress of Paediatric Medicine in Semarang that the Indonesian Paediatric Collegium must remain independent,” he said, as quoted from his personal Instagram account on Monday, 16 February 2026.
Piprim stated that the decision for the Indonesian Paediatric Collegium to remain independent had also been reinforced by a Constitutional Court ruling which stipulated that collegia must be independent in nature. However, he said his stance in favour of collegium independence ultimately resulted in a forced transfer to Fatmawati Central General Hospital.
“But the struggle of myself and colleagues at IDAI, as well as the professors who wanted this collegium to remain independent, resulted in a forced transfer, and because I refused the transfer — which did not comply with the meritocratic principles governing the transfer of civil servants — I was subsequently dismissed by the Health Minister,” he said.
Dr Piprim was born in Malang, East Java, on 15 January 1967. He completed his undergraduate medical degree at Padjadjaran University in 1991, before pursuing his paediatric specialisation at the Faculty of Medicine, University of Indonesia (FKUI), graduating in 2002. He went on to complete his paediatric consultant qualification at FKUI in 2004.