JAKARTA (ANTARA) – The Health Ministry said the main objective of inviting foreign doctors to Indonesia is to address the shortage of medical professionals as well as to allow them to transfer knowledge to local doctors.
The ministry’s health services director-general Azhar Jaya made the remarks on Tuesday in response to a question about the deployment of foreign doctors in Indonesia.
He said knowledge transfer on heart and lung transplants was being carried out in some hospitals as such procedures had never been performed in Indonesia before.
Regarding the dispatch of foreign doctors to remote areas, the government will first listen to the needs and requests of the local community.
If such medical professionals are required in any area, the departments and hospitals concerned will contact the Ministry of Health, which will verify the data before dispatching doctors, he explained.
“What can we do if we need foreign doctors? Because none of our people want to (go there). The point is, the issue of foreign doctors is not what they’re making a fuss about over there,” he said.
Furthermore, he added that Health Law No. 17 of 2023 allows these doctors to only perform surgery for a maximum of two years.
He said foreign doctors would be paid from the available budget as per set norms.
Following a recent statement by the Indonesian Medical Association to ensure better governance and better value local medical professionals by providing better incentives, the minister said the ministry would issue a policy on incentives as a follow-up.
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