Teaching Documents by Vivek Neelakantan
Papers by Vivek Neelakantan
In 1949, newly-independent Indonesia inherited a health system that was devastated by seven years... more In 1949, newly-independent Indonesia inherited a health system that was devastated by seven years of warfare resulting from three-and-a-half years of Japanese occupation and four years of revolutionary struggle against the Dutch. The country suffered from an acute shortage of physicians, and those few physicians were mostly concentrated in the large urban centres where a minority of the population lived. Additionally, the Indonesian Ministry of Health had to cope with the resurgence of epidemic diseases such as smallpox and endemic diseases such as malaria, tuberculosis and yaws. The Ministry of Health had initiated a number of symbolic public health initiatives-both during the Indonesian Revolution (1945 to 1949) and during the early 1950s resulting in a noticeable decline of mortality. These initiatives fuelled the newly-independent nation's confidence because they demonstrated to the international community that it was capable of standing on its own feet. The early 1950s were thus a period of great optimism in Indonesian public health. Unfortunately by the mid-1950s, Indonesia's public health program faltered due to a constellation of factors (a) political tensions between Java and the Outer Islands; (b) administrative problems particularly as the provincial and local governments implemented health policy but depended on the centre for the disbursement of finances; (c) political deadlocks; (d) corruption; (e) rampant inflation; and, (f) political instability. The optimism that characterised the early years of independence paved way for despair. The Soekarno era could therefore be interpreted as the era of bold plans and unfulfilled aspirations in Indonesian public health. This thesis relates the history of health of post-World War II Indonesia to the political history of the 1950s and critically examines the way in which promoting the health of the population became closely related with nation-building. Beginning 1950, Indonesian physicians appropriated military metaphors associated with the revolutionary struggle for independence in order to depict campaign against malaria, tuberculosis, yaws and leprosy as a struggle against the 'big four' endemic diseases that drained the overall vitality of the population. They
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Teaching Documents by Vivek Neelakantan
Papers by Vivek Neelakantan