Indonesia faces challenges with universal health care

 05-Jun-16, The Japan Times 

When Heni Karmila sought to find a doctor for her ailing mother using Indonesia’s new health care system, she faced a nine-hour wait in a line outside a crowded public hospital in Jakarta.

Image: AFP-JIJI

“The queue at the hospital is always very long, packed with young and old people, pregnant women, people who have had accidents, those in need of operations and even tiny babies,” the small business owner, 43, said.

The case illustrates the challenges for Indonesia as it seeks to roll out one of the world’s biggest universal health care systems.

160 million people are so far members of the program in the world’s fourth most populous nation, and it has been credited with helping many since its 2014 launch. But it faces numerous challenges, from underfunding, to slow and patchy implementation, to cases like Karmila’s, where the system has become a victim of its own success in densely populated areas, leading to long lines.

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