Revocation of Medical Program Moratorium

KOMPAS/EMANUEL EDI SAPUTRA (ESA)

Muhammad Asroruddin, an ophthalmologist of Tanjungpura University Hospital in Pontianak, West Kalimantan, (wearing batik shirt) assists fresh graduates of the university\'s medical school. This co-assistance is a professional education program for prospective doctors after they finish their academic program.

The government has revoked a moratorium on opening medical programs. However, the competence of medical graduates must still be prioritized.

The reason the Research, Technology and Higher Education Ministry has revoked the moratorium that came into effect on June 14, 2016, was to meet the need for doctors in various regions across Indonesia. Another reason was to meet the Sustainable Development Goals’ 2030 target of realizing a healthy society with access to health services.

The moratorium had initially been signed at the request of doctors’ organizations after it had been found that many medical programs did not meet the standards. The moratorium was revoked, according to the government, after improvements had been made to existing medical programs.

As a developing country with a population of up to 255 million people, Indonesia faces a shortage of health workers, consisting of general practitioners, dentists, specialist doctors, nurses, midwives, pharmaceutical staff and other supporting health workers.

In 2015, the disparity in the proportion of doctors to the population was huge: one doctor for every 4,000 people. In developed countries, one doctor serves less than 1,000 people. Furthermore, doctors are also unevenly spread. Doctors were keen to develop their knowledge and thus stayed close to the centers of knowledge, which are predominantly on Java.

The immense need for doctors, it must be accepted, has sparked the interest of a number of universities to open medical programs. We support their efforts to ensure that every citizen had access to good medical services.

However, we cannot ignore the fact that opening a medical program needs special treatment, given that the medical profession is a matter of people’s lives. Studying medicine costs a lot and requires hospital residences and reliable teaching staff – that is, doctors.

We appreciate the government’s efforts to assist a number of medical programs in improving their accreditation. However, the public will be hoping that the competence standards are not compromised just for the sake of achieving numbers.

Law No. 20/2013 on Medical Education states that the aim of medical education is to produce doctors that have mastered the medical sciences and are virtuous, dignified, qualified, competent, cultured, ethical, dedicated, professional, safety-oriented, patient, responsible, moral, and humanistic in line with community needs, are able to adapt to the social environment, and have a high sense of community service.

The government must innovative in developing and spreading medical schools that meet these standards and increase the number of competent medical graduates, including doctors. We don’t want the people to lose their trust in our doctors because of cases of misdiagnosis due to incompetent doctors.