Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) started working in Indonesia in 1995 in response to the medical needs following a powerful earthquake in Mount Kerinci, Jambi in Central Sumatra. From 1995 until 2009, the organisation provided medical assistance during emergencies and natural disasters in various provinces in Indonesia and in cooperation with the MoH ran focussed projects on HIV/AIDS and tuberculosis.
In 2015, Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) returned to Indonesia under a Memorandum of Understanding with the Ministry of Health (MoH) focussing on capacity building within adolescent health. In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, MSF joined the MoH in fighting COVID-19 focussing on specific areas within Jakarta and in Banten. This means that today, the organisation remains in the country for various activities in support of the MoH within areas such as capacity building, training facilitation, health education, provision of adolescent health services, emergency preparedness and response, COVID-19 response etc. In Indonesia the organisation is also known as Dokter Lintas Batas.
Timeline: Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) in Indonesia
- 1995: Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) started operations in Indonesia as we responded to the needs following a massive earthquake in Mount Kerinci, Jambi. From 1995 until 2009, the organisation provided medical assistance during emergencies and natural disasters in various provinces in Indonesia and in cooperation with the MoH ran focussed projects on HIV/AIDS and tuberculosis.
- 2015: Until 2015, MSF was back again for supporting the refugees and methanol poisoning issues and other small scale natural disasters. Then MSF collaborated with the Ministry of Health (MoH) Crisis Centre and the local government of Aceh for emergency response and assistance in the provision of mental health and psychosocial activities for Rohingya refugees stranded in the Andaman Sea.
- 2016: Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) responded to the needs in the aftermath of the earthquake in Aceh; and provided psychosocial education intervention in four sub-districts in Pidie Jaya District, Bandar Baru, Pante Raja, Meuredu, and Tringgading in collaboration with local health authorities.
- 2017: Conducted Psychological First Aid (PFA) Training for 32 health workers and 11 Puskesmas, certified by the MoH of the Republic of Indonesia in cooperation with Pidie Jaya District Health Office as part of the response to the Pidie Jaya earthquake.
- 2018: Conducted a series of trainings: 1) Reproductive Health training for teachers and elementary school students in Kepulauan Seribu (Thousand Islands) in collaboration with the DKI Jakarta Provincial Health Office, and 2) Methanol Poisoning training in three cities: Jakarta, Yogyakarta, and Surabaya. This year, Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) also started its adolescent reproductive health project in Labuan & Carita Sub-districts, Banten Province. Meanwhile, local teams responded to earthquakes that struck Lombok Island in July and August, and the triple disaster of earthquake, tsunami, and liquefaction that hit Palu, Central Sulawesi in September. In December, following the eruption of the Krakatoa volcano, a tsunami hit the Sunda Strait coast. Pandeglang District, the area where Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) is running an adolescent reproductive health project, was also badly affected. The organisation immediately mobilised medical response teams for those affected by the disaster.
- 2019: Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) continued the adolescent health project in Pandeglang District, Banten Province. The organisation also ran mobile medical teams in the communities affected by the Sunda Strait tsunami that happened in December 2018.
- 2020: Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières' (MSF) adolescent health project in Banten province is subject for extension in a new MoU with the Ministry of Health. With the COVID-19 pandemic, the organisation worked with the local health authorities in Banten and Jakarta for trainings of health workers, health promotion, as well as supported local teams in contact tracing and surveillance, and infection prevention and control. A new element in the coming MoU will also be to support the MoH Crisis Centre in capacity building within emergency preparedness and response.
- 2021: Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières' (MSF) continued its adolescent health project in Banten province and the COVID-19 pandemic response in Banten and Jakarta. The team in Indonesia also responded to two natural disasters this year in collaboration with the MoH Crisis Centre: Mamuju and Majene earthquake in West Sulawesi and Semeru Mount eruption in West Java.
Adolescent Health Project in Indonesia
As of 2017, nearly a third of Indonesia’s population or more than 65 million, are young people, aged 10 to 24 years old. According to the World Health Organisation, this group are particularly vulnerable, and face barriers in terms of access and use of health services, including social barriers.
Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) is currently running the Adolescent Health Project in Indonesia, focussed on providing reproductive health education for school children and teachers, and in conjunction with the Ministry of Health. It has been involved in coordinating strategies to increase access to confidential reproductive healthcare services tailored to the specific needs of young people and adolescents.
The main goal of our programmes in Banten and Jakarta provinces is to support the Ministry of Health in improving the quality and availability of targeted health services for adolescents, such as ante- and post-natal care for pregnant girls and young mothers, by building connections and capacity with health between local communities, schools, and health service providers. Health education is given in a way that includes and is adapted to the target groups. Capacity-building support for providing adolescent-friendly health services inside health centres, schools, and the community is provided. Modules on mental health psychosocial support for health care workers, health care volunteers (cadres), and adolescents have been developed and facilitated.
MSF in Indonesia collaborates with youth and Puskesmas staff, conducting an inauguration of PANSER (youth health services) at RW 19 Kampung Beting, Koja District, Jakarta, Indonesia. These services provide basic health checks, examination of child symptom checklists, and multiple intelligence examinations. And, basic counseling was also carried out using assessment tools through psychosocial interviews for adolescents and education about personal hygiene and puberty. The MSF team trained 18 youth health cadres, and at the last inauguration event, they reached 55 youths in Kampung Beting. © MSF
Sustainable health promotion programme
To ensure the continued success of the programme, MSF works with the Puskesmas staff by providing guidelines, trainings, and coaching to teachers and cadres. The programme is also overseen by the local government.
Meanwhile, the school health implementation team consists of students from the student council and members of the Red Cross society, teachers and parents as board members, with the principal as chair, and the head of the sub-district and head of the community health clinics as advisers. This inter-stakeholder collaboration is bound by a decree.
“This decree makes every party, from the school level up to the sub-district administrative level, to have ownership of the programme. Everyone is aware of his or her functions, and work together to run and maintain the programme,” said Baihaki.
Seeing the success of the programme, the Puskesmas is now working on replicating the MSF model on adolescent health promotion in schools. According to Abdurrachman Fauzi, school health coordinator from Puskesmas Labuan, they are now working on revitalization and assisting 33 school health in elementary schools of Labuan.
Meanwhile, in Jakarta, Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) is working with the local health authorities to encourage health-seeking behaviour, particularly among young people in the fishing villages and towns of specific areas in Jakarta.
Disaster Response
In the event of larger earthquakes, floods, tsunamis and other emergencies, Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) supports the MoH Crisis Centre in initial health assessments, providing psychological first aid and support including training, donating hygiene kits, etc.
Earthquakes and tsunamis are endemic to Indonesia: liquefaction, a phenomenon where soil loses strength or density and turns to mud, and landslides cause significant damage and loss of life in affected areas. When these happen, access to immediate healthcare is crucial. Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) provides medical care and mental healthcare to disaster-affected communities in order to save lives.
Our teams are composed of a range of specialists like medical doctors, nurses, midwifes, psychologists, logisticians, water and sanitation specialist and many more. Depending on the type and impact of the disaster the response team can be small or very large who will then provide a range of support based on the specific situation in the affected areas.
The priority for teams is to provide support to health centres in remote and hard to reach areas to ensure the provision of primary healthcare and prevention of epidemics such as diarrhoea, skin diseases, and measles.
In Indonesia, we are working together with the Ministry of Health Crisis Centre to strengthen the emergency preparedness and response capacity within areas like disaster health data management, mental health support in emergencies, and environmental health in emergencies (water, sanitation, hygiene). In 2022, we also supported the Ministry of Health Crisis Centre in the disaster response related to an earthquake in Pasaman Barat, Sumatra.
The nurse of MSF team in Indonesia is examining one of the affected communities in an evacuation shelter. They were displaced by the earthquake that hit Mamuju on January 15, 2021. © MSF
COVID-19 Response
Since the start of the pandemic, our teams in Jakarta and Banten also supported the Ministry of Health in response to the pandemic through capacity-building activities like workshops and training of medical staff and community health care workers involved in the management of suspected COVID-19 patients and confirmed COVID-19 patients on home isolation. In Labuan and Carita sub districts, the teams supported the surveillance task force and training of trainers and provided capacity-building support to various village health task forces.
MSF in Indonesia also donated personal protective equipment and antigen test to different health centres and the Ministry of Health. Handwashing points were established and maintained in strategic locations in Labuan and Carita in Banten as well as in Koja, North Jakarta. Health education sessions and materials accompanied these.
Information posts were established as well in strategic locations in Labuan and Carita. Two digital health promotion campaigns were run about COVID-19, mental health, and COVID-19 vaccination, with the first campaign on COVID-19 reaching more than 55 million individual Indonesians.
In Jakarta, the team also organized webinars and training with other stakeholders, including the Indonesian Medical Association (IDI) for training volunteer doctors in Wisma Atlet and MDMC or Muhammadiyah Disaster Management Center for training on the Safe Transport of COVID-19 patients for their partner health workers across Indonesia. As of April 2022, we have ended our focused COVID-19 support and have instead integrated specific COVID-19 elements into our adolescent health capacity-building activities while we keep monitoring the situation.
[updated August 2022]