Jakarta (ANTARA) - The Ministry of Health has reactivated around 300 thousand integrated health services posts (posyandu) in all regions to support the 2022 National Children Immunization Month program that will start in May.
"It is hard for the government to provide health services to 80 thousand villages, 514 districts and cities in 34 provinces if we only rely on community health centers (puskesmas), whose number reaches only around 10 thousand," Health Minister Budi Gunadi Sadikin stated during a virtual press conference accessed from the Health Ministry's YouTube channel here on Thursday.
The existing puskesmas in the country will not be able to reach people living in remote areas, he pointed out.
Hence, the Ministry of Health should expand health service coverage by utilizing additional units of health facilities to reach those people.
"We have observed that the health facilities, which number around 300 thousand units, are posyandu that have been created for a long time, run well, and are known to the public in all corners of Indonesia," he remarked.
To this end, the Ministry of Health, along with the Ministry of Home Affairs and regional governments, have reactivated posyandu for providing standard health services to the community.
The minister remarked that there would be 10 to 20 primary health services that posyandu can offer to the community. "We will ensure that all supporting facilities and infrastructure are immediately completed. One of them is immunization," he stated.
He noted that the policy aligns with the primary health service transformation program in Indonesia.
"The national immunization program will be a success if supported by posyandu cadres," the minister stressed.
On the same occasion, Director General of Disease Prevention and Control at the Ministry of Health Maxi Rein Rondonuwu noted that the COVID-19 pandemic had caused the coverage of the national immunization program to run slowly over fear of COVID-19 transmission among health workers and the community.
"During the pandemic, the coverage was lagging behind," he remarked.
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