SKN to provide the poor free medical treatment

SKN to provide the poor free medical treatment

Dewi Santoso, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

Every citizen, especially the poor, will be assured of access to
health and medical treatment under the new National Health System
(SKN), which recognizes health as a basic human right.

Director General of Public Health Azrul Azwar said on Monday
that the costs would be covered under the government funded
Community Health Improvement (UKM) program. Poor citizens will be
given health cards for free medical services in community health
centers in every district.

Initially, the UKM provides at least six basic services:
health promotion; maternal and child healthcare and family
planning; better nutrition; environmental health; contagious
diseases elimination; and basic health treatment.

"We hope through this program, Indonesia will be free from
polio and measles next year," said Azrul.

Healthcare remains a luxury for the poor as evidenced by many
hospitals that fail to provide proper treatment for poor patients
because they cannot afford to pay the deposit.

Recently, doctors in the Jakarta administration-owned Tarakan
Hospital provided a man, Sumaryono, with poor service and later
discharged him without any medication nor follow-up treatment
because his mother could not afford to pay the Rp 2.8 million
(US$330) medical bill.

He was denied admission to the state Cipto Mangunkusumo
Hospital, also in Central Jakarta, before an individual financed
his surgery at St Carolus private hospital.

Abigail Siging was another case. The 18-year-old mother from
Likupang subdistrict in the North Sulawesi capital of Manado, had
to deliver her baby in the corridor of Malalayang General
Hospital, just in front of the emergency room, as she could not
afford to pay a Rp 3 million deposit for her Caesarean operation
and treatment.

Azwar said the new SKN would prevent hospitals from denying
the poor or providing them with inadequate healthcare.

The system would be implemented under a government regulation
next year, because it would take too long to expect the House of
Representatives to pass it into law.

Minister of Health Achmad Sujudi will launch the campaign for
the new SKN on Nov. 12. The old national health system was
launched in 1982, aimed at providing a community health center in
every district across the country.

The new health system is aimed at achieving a Healthy
Indonesia by 2010.

To implement the UKM, the government will allocate 5 percent
of the country's Gross Domestic Product or 15 percent of the
total regional budget (APBD). It means the first year of the
scheme will cost the state around Rp 5.85 trillion.

The government's share accounts for 30 percent of the national
health system funding, with the rest to be paid by the public and
private sector, which will receive tax incentives in return for
their donations.

Marius Widjajarta of the Indonesian Health Consumer
Empowerment Foundation (YPKKI) welcomed the new SKN for adopting
the Law No. 8/1999 on consumer protection.

"The new SKN will provide healthcare and medical treatment
equally to every citizen, regardless of their economic status. It
means poor people will receive the same standard of health
treatment as others," he said.