REPUBLIKA.CO.ID, JAKARTA -- The Health Ministry has targeted to deploy 18,185 workers to the frontier, outermost, and remote (3T) regions this year, in order to ensure the equal distribution of skilled resources, an official stated here on Wednesday.

During the press conference in Jakarta, on Wednesday, Usman Sumantri, the ministry's head of health workers development and empowerment stated that some Rp802 billion has been allocated for the assignment of health workers to the 3T regions.

The health workers will be grouped into 150 Nusantara teams, comprised of seven to nine people of different specialties.

Apart from the team, the ministry will also send some individuals to the outermost regions under the Nusantara Sehat program.

"We have targeted some 3,835 workers to be deployed in the outermost, frontier regions, as well as the islands and the low-income areas," Sumantri noted.

The Health Ministry, he added, has planned to send 12 thousand intern doctors to several regions in the country.

Meanwhile, the ministry also has expanded the number of expertise of "Mandatory Work for Medical Specialist" program.

"In the specialist program, we have added two more categories, so that the list now covers seven specialists, including midwifery, pediatrics, internist, surgical anesthesia, clinical pathology, and radiology. At present, we are considering to include the anatomical pathology specialist into the mandatory list," Sumatri stressed.

Beside the specialists, the ministry also sought to deploy one thousand new medical workers from the seven specialists¿ category.

As a country with more than 17 thousand islands, Indonesia has been challenged to equally distribute the health workers to the frontier, isolated, and outermost regions.

However, the Health Ministry has sought to overcome the problem by launching a mandatory program for the new medical graduates to be deployed in the remote regions.

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