TEMPO.CO, Jakarta - The Indonesian Medical Association (IDI) has planned to launch a national-scale protest in the National Monument (Monas) Area in Jakarta on Monday, October 24, 2016.

Members of regional IDI from across Indonesia have been scheduled to participate in the rally to demand reforms in the healthcare and doctor education systems.

IDI chairman Daeng Mohammad Faqih claimed that the primary doctor program had missed the target, wasted state budget, prolonged doctor's education, marginalized existing doctors, and created conflicts among doctors.

Daeng added that the program discriminated a certain group of doctors.

"The primary doctor program is not the answer to an urgent problem in the health care service," Daeng told Tempo on Friday, October 21, 2016.

Daeng called on the government to focus on priority programs, namely procuring healthcare equipment, providing medicines, addressing fake drugs, and improving facilities in community health centers and hospitals, as well as recruiting doctors.

Despite the rally, Daeng said that doctors would prioritize public services, by not abandoning ERs, ICUs, ICCUs, operating room, and other primary healthcare services.

Jakarta IDI chairman Slamet Budiharto said that the IDI would also demand the government to control medical school tuitions, improve regulations that support the national health insurance, and revise the law on doctors’ education.

Slamet explained that the IDI had been concerned with the tuition fee to attend the primary school program. Previously, the education was financed by the government.

"Now we have to pay the tuition by ourselves to get an equivalent degree and not a specialist [degree]," Slamet added.

DANANG FIRMANTO