Floating hospitals: meeting healthcare gaps in Indonesia

 18-Jul-17, Asia Sentinel 

The increase of Indonesia’s health budget allocation from 3.7 percent of GDP in the 1990s to 5 percent in 2017, totaling IDR104 tn (USD7.28 bn), is designed to alleviate some of the country’s healthcare delivery problems, with 75 percent of citizens still greatly depending on public health care.

Image: Asia Sentinel

But one of the biggest problems is not the provision of health carebut the ability to get it to the people of a country scattered over more than 17,500 islands. There is one floating hospital but the ship, a 122-meter-long Korea-built vessel featuring an emergency room, three surgeries and six polyclinics among its facilities, is too big to land at far too many of the smaller islands.

The ship, the KRI Dr Soeharso, is administered by 75 crew members, 65 medical staff and is capable of accommodating 40 inpatients. In an emergency, the KRI Dr Soeharso can also accommodate 400 troops and 3,000 passengers. The ship was invaluable for a humanitarian mission during the earthquake and tsunami that devastated Banda Aceh in 2004.

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