Indonesian Officials Banned from Seeking Overseas Treatment

East Kalimantan Governor Awang Faroek is banning local officials from traveling abroad for medical treatment, arguing that the resource-rich province already has a world-class hospital.
"I will not allow any of East Kalimantan officials including district heads and mayors to seek overseas medical treatment before they get reference letters from Abdul Wahab Sjahrani General Hospital in Samarinda," he said here on Monday.
He said the hospital already had complete medical devices and that the people of East Kalimantan including officials must take optimum advantage of them. One of the medical devices was echocardiography used to diagnose certain cardiovascular diseases.
In Indonesia, only Harapan Kita Cardiac Center in Jakarta and Abdul Wahab Sjahranie Hospital in Samarina had such medical device, he said. There was no longer need for East Kalimantan officials to travel to Jakarta, Malaysia or Singapore merely for cardiac tests, he said.
They could have medical checkups at the hospital which was also providing VIP class inpatient medical care services, he said. To most well-to-do Indonesian patients, seeking medical treatment abroad has become a common practice, with most of them traveling to Malaysia and Singapore.
In 2007, more than 221,500 Indonesians were treated in Malaysia and 226,200 in Singapore. According to the Health Ministry, Indonesians spend an estimated Rp100 trillion a year on overseas healthcare.