Tangerang. Indonesia ranks almost at the bottom globally in terms of the ratio of specialist doctors to the population it needs a shortcut to tackle the issue, President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo said on Wednesday.

The government has recently amended the health law to boost the number of doctors with relevant specialties, he said on the sidelines of the National Health Congress held in Tangerang, Banten Province.

"One of the reasons we revised the health law is to simplify procedures for our doctors to attain post-graduate training and become specialists,” the president said.

"Our biggest problem is the lack of doctors and specialist doctors. The doctor ratio in our country is a mere 0.47 (per 1,000 people) and we rank 147th in the world. We must acknowledge the problem and do something about it.”

The amended law encourages more local universities to open medical schools and allows government-appointed hospitals to issue specialty certification in the post-graduate training they host.

In the past, medical schools in universities were the only places where doctors could acquire the title of specialists.

During an interview with BTV last year, Health Minister Budi Gunadi Sadikin said the shortage of specialist doctors originates from the limited number of advanced programs in medical schools across the country.

“It’s both very difficult and expensive to become a medical specialist in Indonesia because, among 92 medical schools countrywide, only 20 have specialist programs,” Budi said.

The health law revision drew protests from various medical associations last year due to some contentious new articles.

The revisions sought to limit the number of associations to one in any medical discipline, reduce the power of a professional association in issuing medical licenses, and introduce criminal offenses for medical negligence that causes a patient to suffer a serious injury with a prison sentence of up to three years.