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recent years leading to growing numbers of private providers. Most health services are still provided
by the public sector and have shown improvements although only 61% of the population is covered
which is relatively low considering national income levels. Furthermore, strong socioeconomic and
geographical inequities are observed across the country. There seem to be significant inequalities
among different wealth quintiles in health outcomes and especially in under-5 mortality rates, as well
as much worse outcomes and access to services in eastern and rural areas of Indonesia comparing to
the rest.
Access to health services is in many cases restricted, as there are insufficient human resources,
physical restrictions due to remote locations and weak transport infrastructure, and high out-of-
pocket expenses which is particularly harmful for the poorest groups of the population. Health
infrastructure has generally improved and hospital beds have increased but still lagging behind other
East Asian countries.
Efforts have also been made by the government to create social protection schemes to reduce poverty
and improve access to health services and facilities. The National Health Insurance Programme, which
was recently implemented, issues government-paid premiums for the poorest and near-poor
populations and is now the biggest scheme of this kind in the world covering 165 million Indonesians.
However, a large amount of the population is still excluded from this scheme mainly because it does
not cover workers in the informal sector which remains large. Lastly, another challenge that needs to
be addressed is the poor status of health information systems. After the decentralisation, the quality
and availability of data has become worse as districts were not obligated to report to a central level
and monitoring is still lacking.
The progress observed in the health sector is mostly driven internally (government). The Indonesian
government is also collaborating with both national and international organisations such as the World
Bank, WHO, UNICEF and the Global Fund to reach closer to the SDGs and towards achieving Universal
Health Coverage (UHC).