The Minister of Health said that the concept of a health resilience system is a policy that cannot be tolerated because it involves human life.
The Indonesian Minister of Health, Budi Gunadi Sadikin, said that his party is targeting 50 percent of raw materials for medicines from the upstream to downstream sectors to be available in the country.
Minister of Health added that this step was carried out in order to reduce dependence on imports of pharmaceutical products.
"Our target is that 50 percent of the raw materials upstream to downstream, we try to be domestic. Who makes it? It's up to what is important in the country, so if there is another pandemic, we don't need to be busy looking for it from outside," said Budi in Cikarang. , West Java, Thursday (2/6/2022).
"Yesterday we were a bit stuck because the vaccine was made by the Serum Institute of India. Because it lacked vaccines, everything was blocked, and we couldn't export it. This caused a significant delay in the vaccination program in Indonesia and many people were affected and died as a result," he said.
Budi said the concept of a health resilience system is a policy that cannot be tolerated because it involves human life. "We cannot tolerate it and we are willing to invest because it is very important in matters of life," he said.
Budi said Indonesia has promising natural resources for the development of medicinal raw materials. However, up to now, about 90 percent of these needs are imported from abroad.
One of Indonesia's promising natural resources as raw materials for drugs is Petro Pharmaceutical products which can be developed for the manufacture of Paracetamol. "That's homework as well as how to build the domestic petrochemical industry, so that the raw materials needed by the chemical-based pharmaceutical industry can be built," he said.
In addition to developing raw materials for petrochemical-based drugs, Budi also wants the domestic pharmaceutical industry to develop plasma-based drugs such as albumin, factor eight, immunoglobulin, gamaras and others.
"Indonesian people number 270 million, we should be the fourth largest producer of blood plasma in the world. The products that are widely used are still all imported. That's not true. There must be a mafia who doesn't want to build a factory here," he said.
The Ministry of Health also encourages the development of biosimilar-based drugs which are imitations of biologic drugs whose patents have expired. Its position is similar to that of generic drugs which are imitations of chemical drugs whose patents have expired, such as biologic drugs insulin, albumin, and interferon. (Aantara, tempo)
