JAKARTA: The government is shifting its focus from free health screenings to controlling and treating priority diseases most detected through the checkups, with more people participating in the second year of the programme.
More than 73 million people, from newborns to the elderly, received free screenings in the first seven months of this year, surpassing the 70 million examinations conducted throughout 2025.
The screening, one of President Prabowo Subianto’s flagship programmes, was launched in February 2025.
As the programme is used to map the country’s disease burden, the Health Ministry is now moving to ensure follow-up care for people with health problems, particularly hypertension, hyperglycaemia and high cholesterol.
“Our goal is not only to screen, but to make people healthier,” Health Minister Budi Gunadi Sadikin said in a briefing on Tuesday (Aug 4).
“If we can keep these three conditions under control, we can reduce cases of stroke, heart disease and kidney failure, which are among the country’s leading causes of death.”
The three conditions are prioritzed as they were the most common findings among adults participating in the free screening, alongside abdominal obesity, physical inactivity and dental cavities.
The ministry also highlighted the detection of heart disease risk among newborns, as well as high blood pressure among school-age children and teenagers.
Meanwhile, the most common health problems among the elderly were physical inactivity, obesity, tooth loss, prehypertension and diabetes.
Based on a sampling from several puskesmas (community health centres), which conducted the screening at the community level, health authorities found only between 43 and 62 per cent of participants diagnosed with health conditions received medication immediately.
To improve follow-up care, Health Ministry primary and community healthcare director general Maria Endang Sumiwi said it would dispense medication right after screening at sites, including providing a 15-day supply of free medicine for hypertension, hyperglycemia and high cholesterol.
After the initial treatment, patients will be referred to continue their treatment covered by the National Health Insurance (JKN) programme, which is managed by the Healthcare and Social Security Agency (BPJS Kesehatan).
The ministry aims to expand the program to cover 130 million people, nearly half of Indonesia’s population, by the end of this year.
The end goal is to cover the whole country by 2029, although Budi acknowledged achieving such a figure would be challenging. The screening programme could help raise Indonesians’ healthy life expectancy as long as patients receive proper follow-up care, University of Indonesia (UI) public health professor Iwan Ariawan said.
“What contributes most to healthy life expectancy is preventing people from getting sick or, if they do become sick, keeping the diseases under control,” Iwan said during the Health Ministry’s briefing on Tuesday. Indonesia’s average life expectancy stood at around 74 years in 2024.
Meanwhile, healthy life expectancy, or the average number of years one can expect to live in full health before facing sex- and age-specific mortality and morbidity, was only about 65 years. This means many Indonesians live with illness for the remaining nine years of their lives.
Narrowing the gap, according to Iwan, would require reducing premature deaths and preventing chronic diseases. Epidemiologist Dicky Budiman from Griffith University in Australia welcomed the ministry’s shift in focus, calling it a well-targeted progression.
“The priorities are appropriate because these three conditions are the root causes of many preventable deaths in Indonesia,” Dicky said on Wednesday while noting the program’s success would depend on the implementation on the ground.
Among the programme’s biggest challenges is to make sure patients return for treatment after getting their test results.
The continuity of treatment could also be threatened once the 15-day free medication period ends, Dicky said, as he noticed the free access to treatment under the JKN scheme is often hindered by administrative barriers.
While welcoming the growing number of people participating in the screenings, he urged puskesmas to be prepared to anticipate a surging number of patients after the initial examinations. - The Jakarta Post/ANN
