Jakarta (ANTARA) – President Joko Widodo (Jokowi) instructed Health Minister Budi Gunadi Sadikin to take requisite steps to immediately detect Indonesians suffering from tuberculosis (TB).”President Jokowi gave us direction to work with the minister of home affairs and the minister of villages to carry out detection of all Indonesians regarding TB cases. It must be started as soon as possible,” Sadikin remarked after attending a limited meeting regarding the acceleration of tuberculosis elimination at the Jakarta Presidential Palace on Tuesday. He noted that based on estimation, there are 969 thousand TB sufferers in Indonesia every year. Earlier, only 545 thousand of these patients could be identified, while the remaining 400 thousand were not detected. However, with the aggressiveness of government programs to prevent and treat TB, the detection of TB sufferers has increased to 720 thousand, he explained. “We hope that by 2024, some 90 percent of the estimated 969 thousand can be found or detected,” Sadikin stated.
Source: Antara News Agency