Indonesia’s Ministry of Health announced that 1,635 hospitals have submitted reports on implementing the Antimicrobial Resistance Control Program, accounting for 51 percent of the nation’s healthcare facilities.
Deputy Health Minister Dante Saksono Harbuwono delivered the figures in Jakarta on Thursday, emphasizing that antimicrobial resistance remains a critical global threat as microorganisms grow increasingly resilient to standard antibiotic treatments.
Global Toll and National Strategy
Data from the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation for 2021 shows that AMR directly caused 1.14 million deaths globally while contributing to another 4.71 million fatalities worldwide.
“AMR is a silent pandemic whose impact is anything but silent. No single country can sweep it away alone,” Harbuwono said.
Harbuwono said that the health threat extends particularly to older adults, farmers, postpartum mothers, and newborns suffering from sepsis. To combat the crisis, the Indonesian government integrated containment measures into the 2025–2029 National Medium-Term Development Plan alongside the National Strategy for AMR Control in the Health Sector. Officials set an overarching national goal to expand these control programs to 80 percent of hospitals by 2029.
Surveillance and Clinical Practice Standards
The ministry expanded hospital surveillance networks from 69 facilities in 2023 to 139 in 2024, incorporating monitoring for World Health Organization priority bacteria and designating national reference laboratories. Microbiology mapping currently indicates that 131 out of 514 districts and cities possess the necessary equipment and trained personnel to perform cultures and antibiotic susceptibility testing.
To tighten regulatory oversight, the Food and Drug Authority regulates antibiotic indications, while the Health Ministry maintains National Clinical Practice Guidelines for clinical prescribing. Hospital accreditation processes now mandate the integration of antibiotic susceptibility testing and antibiogram mapping.
“When we conduct an accreditation process, we map the pathogens present in each hospital. Since making this mandatory in hospital accreditation, we can now ensure hospitals consistently use antibiotics appropriately,” Harbuwono said.
The government aims for 60 percent of public hospitals to meet specific standards for empirical systemic antibiotic prescribing, and Harbuwono urged physicians to rely strictly on medical indications when prescribing antibiotics.
International Collaboration and Training
Efforts to align domestic policy with international frameworks accompanied the Asia-Pacific Regional AMR Conference, co-hosted by the Health Ministry and ReAct Asia Pacific in Jakarta on November 9–10, 2026. The conference brought together approximately 90 delegates from 28 countries to evaluate progress toward the targets established in the 2024 United Nations Political Declaration, with recommendations slated for a joint evaluation document ahead of a 2029 UN meeting.
Those global targets include a 10 percent reduction in deaths linked to bacterial AMR by 2030, funded national action plans in at least 60 percent of countries, and ensuring that 70 percent of human antibiotic use comes from the WHO Access group of safer, effective medicines.
ReAct Asia Pacific Director S.S. Lal noted at the conference that grassroots implementation remains the primary hurdle for containment efforts.
At the operational level, the Ministry of Health and the World Health Organization conducted a three-day training program on August 26–28, 2026, in Bandung for multidisciplinary hospital teams from seven referral facilities. These teams, consisting of microbiologists, managers, clinicians, pharmacists, and infection prevention and control staff, utilized the Western Pacific Region guidance to simulate outbreak responses, track cases, and reinforce antibiotic stewardship.
