TEMPO.CO, Jakarta - President Joko "Jokowi" Widodo this morning conducted an impromptu visit to Mayapada Hospital in Bandung, West Java, during which monitoring the medical facilities and equipment.

He said the hospital owns qualified facilities and buildings. However, he regretted that many Indonesians still choose to seek health treatment abroad.

“I’m informed that almost 2 million of our people still go abroad for treatment when they are sick, even though we have hospitals like this. It’s nearly 2 million,” he said on Monday, March 6, 2023.

He outlined that of the figure, one million went to Malaysia, 750,000 to Singapore, and the rest went to Japan, the US, Germany, and other countries. This, he emphasized, caused the country to lose foreign exchange revenue.

“Should we proceed with it? We lose Rp165 trillion of foreign exchange revenue because of that, because there is capital outflow,” the state head underlined.

Learning from this, he strongly supported the construction of quality hospitals like Mayapada Hospital. However, he acknowledged that building a high-standard hospital is not the only problem.

“There are still not enough specialist doctors or sub-specialist doctors. I have told the Health Minister to address this issue,” said Jokowi.

M JULNIS FIRMANSYAH

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