Press Release

dr. Achmad Yurianto, as the Director General for Disease Prevention and Control, Ministry of Health

On 31st Aug 2020, the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) signed a cooperation agreement with the Ministry of Health of the Republic of Indonesia. Under the agreement, JICA will provide a technical cooperation scheme for the project of Strengthening Capacity for Early Warning and Response (EWARS) To Infectious Diseases for four years. Due to the current situation, both parties signed respectively at each office.

As the current global pandemic of COVID-19 shows, the infectious diseases control is one of the top-priority global health issues. JICA, as an implementing agency which has long and extensive experiences of working with its partner countries in the field of public health, is now trying to respond to the urgent needs for dealing with COVID-19 and also to support building resilient, flexible health systems toward realization of Universal Health Coverage (UHC) worldwide.

Shinichi Yamanaka, as Chief Representative of JICA Indonesia Office

In Indonesia, controlling infectious diseases has been a significant threat to people's health and is still major challenge in the county. Tuberculous infection is the second highest in the world after India, and the emerging infectious disease such as avian flu and of course now Covid-19 has grown to enormous challenges to the people and the country's health system.

Since 1960, JICA has been committing to cooperate in fighting against infectious diseases in Indonesia from many aspects including research and development or surveillance system through both grant aid projects and technical cooperation projects.

This project is a part of the continuous cooperation between Japan and Indonesia in fighting with infectious diseases, and, at the same time, is expected to contribute tackling with the current emergency caused by COVID-19.

JICA and Ministry of Health recognize that strengthening surveillance and response capacity both at the national level and regional level shall be a high priority in the country. In the Record of Discussion, both parties agreed to work on strengthening

1. Infectious disease surveillance and response capacity of the Ministry of Health is strengthened;
2. and Measures for strengthening infectious disease surveillance are identified, implemented/piloted, and verified in the pilot provinces.

The project will be implemented for four years from this year. JICA and the Ministry of Health plan to work closely to enhance capacity of human resources of health professionals throughout the surveillance network in Indonesia and to upgrade the laboratory facilities in MoH national laboratory network.