As Eight Countries Help Indonesia Fighting COVID-19

Jakarta, MINA – Indonesian Foreign Minister Retno Marsudi explained that there were several countries that had provided assistance to Indonesia in handling coronavirus or COVID-19 pandemic.

According to Retno, the diplomacy carried out by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs during the COVID-19 pandemic is to open cooperation with other countries, including for the procurement of medical devices and medicines as needed.

“Countries that have helped include Japan, America, Singapore, China, Vietnam, South Korea, Australia and the United Arab Emirates,” said Retno on Tuesday as quoted from Republika.

Retno explained the majority of aid provided was medical devices such as personal protective equipment (PPE), ventilators, hand sanitizers. In addition, according to her, assistance also took the form of the COVID-19 detection test.

Retno explained that for assistance in the form of Covid-19 test kits, it had to go through approval from the Covid-19 Handling Acceleration Task Force because the Ministry of Foreign Affairs did not have the capacity to approve the assistance offered.

Retno gave an example of the assistance of the COVID-19 test kit offered by Turkey, it has provided a list of assistance offered to be studied in more depth by the Task Force for Handling the Acceleration of COVID-19.

“There is a Task Force for the Accreditation Handling of Covid-19 there is a team that specializes in handling the problem of test equipment and then they communicate with our representatives in Ankara, Turkey,” he said.

He said the diplomacy carried out by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs during the COVID-19 pandemic there were two big things, namely the protection of Indonesian citizens abroad and opening the door to the cooperation of goods needed in handling COVID-19. (T/RE1)

Mi’raj News Agency (MINA)