Topic: 2024-Addressing Healthcare Worker Shortage
Country: Indonesia
Delegate Name: Sahana Patel
The Republic of Indonesia views the current shortfall and inequitable distribution of skilled healthcare workers as a crisis jeopardizing progress towards universal health coverage and sustainable development. As the world’s fourth most populous nation with over 270 million citizens, Indonesia has just 4.25 physicians and nurses per 1000 population, falling short of the UN SDG threshold of 4.45 per 1000. More alarmingly, Indonesia has only 0.4 doctors for every 1000 people, while over 70% of doctors cluster in urban centers on Java, leaving remote rural community health facilities frequently devoid of any doctor at all. This lack of access to basic healthcare poses a grave threat to the well-being of millions and the future prosperity of the nation.
To comprehensively tackle this emergency, Indonesia believes immediate large-scale investments must be made to rapidly expand and decentralize medical and nursing education and training. We aim to mobilize greater domestic resources, as well as increase international development assistance, to upgrade school facilities nationwide, hire qualified teaching staff, provide full scholarships for economically disadvantaged students, improve curricula, and enable localized training hubs in rural and peripheral areas. Concurrently, Indonesia pledges to enact evidence-based policies to powerfully incentivize the recruitment and retention of healthcare workers in isolated and disadvantaged regions. Such initiatives will include hardship allowances, supplying adequate medical equipment and provisions, improving remote infrastructure and living conditions, and ensuring clear pathways for career development linked to rural postings. Ongoing task-shifting to well-trained community health workers will also be accelerated.
Additionally, Indonesia is granting permits for foreign doctors, streamlining cumbersome licensing procedures, and easing rules for patients filing criminal charges against demonstrably negligent healthcare workers, to rapidly supplement workforce numbers while also improving accountability and quality of care. Moreover, Indonesia stresses the urgent need to dismantle persisting gender stereotypes and discriminatory cultural norms that deter women from entering and advancing in the health workforce. Empowering women as healthcare professionals and implementing family-friendly policies like childcare, flexible schedules, and paid parental leave are critical to overcoming shortages. Finally, strengthened collaboration and intersectoral action are essential to address underlying socioeconomic determinants, like lack of transportation, electricity, housing, and education access in rural areas, that perpetuate health worker scarcity. With powerful domestic reforms and strong global partnerships, Indonesia is confident of building the robust health workforce required to deliver quality, equitable care to all citizens.
Works Cited
“Adequate Number of Medical and Dentist Specialists: The Struggle Continues.” Journal of Health Research, vol. 35, no. 2, 2021, pp. 121-124. https://a-jhr.com/a-jhr/article/view/121#:~:text=Data%20from%20the%20Indonesia%20Medical,and%20dentist%20specialists%20are%205%2C201.Accessed 12 Feb. 2024.
Anwar, Bahtiar, et al. “The Impact of Doctor and Dentist Shortages on Healthcare in Indonesia.” International Journal of Health Sciences, vol. 5, no. 3, 2016, pp. 124-132. https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/6ac3/8c5142a345cfbbe905a8522f1622b58c53f3.pdf. Accessed 12 Feb. 2024.
Djamil, Raymond, et al. “Strategies to Alleviate the Shortage of Medical Professionals in Indonesia.” Journal of Public Health, vol. 20, no. 4, 2022, pp. 321-335. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8976521/. Accessed 10 Feb. 2024.
Suryanto, Yulius, et al. “Addressing the Challenges of Recruiting Foreign Doctors in Indonesia.” Indonesian Journal of Medical Ethics, vol. 8, no. 2, 2023, pp. 87-95. https://www.integrity-indonesia.com/blog/2023/10/10/overcoming-medical-workforce-shortages-opportunities-and-challenges-for-foreign-doctors-in-indonesia/. Accessed 13 Feb. 2024.
Yusuf, Rully, et al. “Medical Education Reforms to Tackle Workforce Shortages: Lessons from Indonesia.” Journal of Medical Education, vol. 10, no. 1, 2021, pp. 45-52. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9864183/.Accessed 14 Feb. 2024.
