Indonesia to Nationally Develop Herbal Medicine to Reduce Drug Import

The Ministry of State-Owned Enterprises (SOE) intended to develop the production of herbal medicine at national scale in order to reduce the import of raw materials for the pharmaceutical industry.

Minister Erick Thohir said one of the state-owned pharmaceutical companies Indofarma has been mandated to focus on developing and producing the traditional medicine.

“Indofarma will prioritize herbal medicine,” Thohir said on Friday, January 4, as reported by Antara. “Our herbal medicine is very robust, but it hasn’t been developed because [public] prefer imported medicines.”

According to him, Indonesia has what it takes in order to develop the industry at larger scale, such as fertile soil and abundant sunshine that are needed to grow various types of plants. If the herbal industry is successfully developed, Thohir said Indonesia will eventually be able to reduce the import of raw materials for medicine.

Aside from encouraging the development of national herbal industry, his office also aims to integrate state-owned hospitals. Currently, a number of state-owned enterprises have and run their own hospitals, including oil and gas giant Pertamina and port operator Pelindo.

“We will merge them all. There are 73 hospitals with almost 7,000 bed capacity. It will be the biggest in Indonesia,” Thohir revealed.

Furthermore, the government has recently started the construction of Internasional Bali Hospital, in cooperation with Mayo Clinic, which is a “nonprofit American academic medical center focused on integrated health care, education, and research” and is globally known to provide world-leading treatment cancer.

Upon its completion, the hospital is expected to convince more Indonesians to seek medical treatments in the country rather than abroad.