TEMPO.CO, Jakarta - The Indonesian Health Ministry announced that it will soon issue a regulation that effectively revokes the controversial self-paid Covid-19 vaccination, which the ministry itself introduced under Health Ministry Regulation No.19/2021. This comes after President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo specifically mentioned this issue and ordered a stop to it.

The spokesperson for the Health Ministry’s vaccination, Siti Nadia Tarmizi, confirmed this on July 18. “Yes [there will be a new regulation to cancel the previous one]. There will indeed be changes introduced,” she said.

Despite confirming changes, Tarmizi did not elaborate in detail when the regulation will be issued and only assures that it will indeed be cancelled.

Prior to this, Cabinet Secretary Pramono Anung announced that the President wants the self-paid vaccination program dropped after receiving input from the public. This effectively means the only paid-vaccination program will only be in the form of ‘gotong royong’ program, which allows private companies to purchase Covid-19 vaccines to provide its employees with vaccinations.

The announcement of this program was initially met with protests from many people with the main argument being the vaccine’s status as a public commodity that should be able to be accessed by the public and that it should not only be available for those able to pay for a Covid-19 vaccination.

In December last year, President Jokowi himself determined the vaccines would be free of charge.

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BUDIARTI UTAMI PUTRI | EGI ADYATAMA