Antara News·Indonesia·Saturday, November 7, 2026 at 08:34 AM UTC

Closing Indonesia's health personnel gaps with local human capital

Translate

Aditya Ramadhan, Raka Adji

Jakarta (ANTARA) - To fill the gaps in healthcare workers, the Indonesian government is shifting its approach from deploying personnel from other regions to educating local youth to serve their own hometowns.

Ministry of Health data as of August 2026 shows that 38 percent of community health centers (puskesmas) remain understaffed, lacking a full complement of nine core medical and health personnel roles, with a total deficit of 6,927 workers.

Deputy Minister of Health Benjamin Paulus Octavianus presented the figure at the 2nd National Forum of the Indonesian Health Council (KKI) 2026 late last month, which also marked the council's second anniversary.

The nine essential roles comprise doctors, dentists, nurses, midwives, public health officers, environmental health specialists, medical laboratory technologists, nutritionists, and pharmacists. Without a full workforce, puskesmas struggle to deliver comprehensive promotive and preventive services.

The issue of healthcare worker shortages and uneven distribution was also highlighted at the Asia Pacific Action Alliance on Human Resources for Health (AAAH) Conference in Bali in early November. The event brought together 200 policymakers, educators, and development partners from 22 countries.

Health workforce shortages are a global issue, not unique to Indonesia. The World Health Organization (WHO) projects a global deficit of around 11 million healthcare workers by 2030.

Last September, the organization also warned that the simultaneous aging of both populations and the healthcare workforce could widen the gap even further.

AAAH Chair Anna Kurniati—who is also Secretary of the Ministry of Health's Directorate General of Pharmaceuticals and Medical Devices—noted that the burden on healthcare workers is growing increasingly complex.

Aging populations, a rise in non-communicable diseases, emerging infectious diseases, and climate change are compounding the pressure. The WHO added that persistent underinvestment in healthcare education and training in multiple nations continues to fuel the shortage.

For Indonesia, rather than the quantity of health personnel, a more fundamental issue is the disparities in distribution.

The Ministry of Health is leveraging the Health Human Resources Information System to map distribution and project staffing needs, prioritizing regions with limited access, such as Papua, East Nusa Tenggara, and Maluku. May 2026 data identifies dentists as the most widely lacking healthcare professionals at puskesmas.

For a decade, the primary solution to this issue has been health personnel placement schemes. Launched in 2015, the Ministry of Health's Special Assignment Program has deployed 21,105 health workers across 3,630 puskesmas in 331 districts and cities.

However, the ministry considers this scheme a mere temporary fix, as personnel are assigned only for specific tenures. As a result, service continuity at remote health centers relies on the next recruitment cycle, since doctors do not stay permanently.

The core problem lies in education. Ministry of Health data from the 2024 rollout of the hospital-based specialist medical residency (PPDS) program revealed that Java and Bali accounted for 67 percent of specialist residency participants. In contrast, Kalimantan supplied just two percent, and eastern Indonesia made up only one percent.

Training centers were similarly concentrated, with 52 percent located on those two islands. If this trend persists, eastern Indonesia will have virtually no specialist candidates from its own local population.

That gap is precisely what the hospital-based specialist residency program aims to close. In its first phase, the program admitted 52 residents across six teaching hospitals. Participants are exempt from tuition fees as they hold employee status at their training hospitals. The initiative also prioritizes doctors from regions with severe shortages of medical specialists.

The government has approved operational permits for 25 additional study programs, bringing the total to 31, with priority given to doctors from underdeveloped, frontier, and outermost regions.

The urgency aligns with Ministry of Health projections showing Indonesia could face a deficit of nearly 65,000 medical specialists by 2032 without accelerated measures. This hospital-based medical residency program operates alongside conventional university-based programs rather than replacing them.

Financial backing is also being mobilized. Between 2022 and 2025, the Ministry of Health recorded 8,484 scholarships awarded through joint ministry and Indonesia Endowment Fund for Education (LPDP) schemes. The focus has shifted from merely filling immediate vacancies to preparing local professionals to occupy those roles over the long term.

Addressing the gap requires more than just increasing the quantity of health personnel. At the KKI forum, Benjamin stressed that the fulfillment of health worker needs must be carried out by ensuring the alignment between demand, competency, fields, and equal distribution.

He urged that continuous professional development focus on practical competencies rather than the mere accumulation of credit points. This includes mastering artificial intelligence, telemedicine, and electronic health records.

For personnel serving in remote, border, and island regions as well as health-disadvantaged areas, capacity-building can be pursued through online training, blended learning, and mentorship from referral hospitals. The six key directives issued, including data-driven needs planning and fair discipline enforcement, are directly linked to these efforts.

A similar direction is highlighted in the three core pillars of the AAAH Conference: leadership and governance, quality education alongside career-long healthcare worker welfare, and inclusive digital transformation.

Deputy Minister Benjamin asserted that investing in health human resources must be a priority for every nation, reiterating Indonesia's readiness to strengthen regional collaboration.

Meanwhile, WHO Regional Director for the Western Pacific Saia Ma’u Piukala, a former surgeon, emphasized the need to protect healthcare workers by providing decent working conditions, career development, and well-being.

Established in 2005 with 10 member states, AAAH has grown to a network of 22 countries across the Asia-Pacific.

The Bali conference aimed to deliver policy recommendations to strengthen health workforce planning, boost worker safety and welfare, and expand digital innovation, with its outcomes expected to serve as a benchmark for member nations.

View the original on Antara News →

KioskNews shows a cleaned-up reading view extracted from the publisher’s page — the original always lives on their site, not ours.