Prehospital care in Indonesia.

BACKGROUND Indonesia is a huge, diverse, and developing country that until recently had no public ambulance service let alone a system of prehospital care. It commonly experiences many natural disasters, manmade conflicts, and violence as well as the daily emergencies seen worldwide. CURRENT SYSTEM Hospitals of varying standards are widespread but have no system of emergency ambulance or patient retrieval. Indonesia's only public emergency ambulance service, 118, is based in five of the biggest cities and is leading the way in paramedic training and prehospital care. CHALLENGES AND DEVELOPMENTS There are many challenges faced including the culture of acceptance, vast geographical areas, traffic, inadequate numbers of ambulances, and access to quality training resources. Recently there have been a number of encouraging developments including setting up of a disaster response brigade, better provision of ambulances, and development of paramedic training. CONCLUSIONS An integrated national regionalised hospital and prehospital system may seem fantastic but with the enthusiasm of those involved and perhaps some help from countries with access to training resources it may not be an unrealistic goal.