Minister of Health Budi G. Sadikin accompanied by Director General of Pharmaceuticals and Medical Devices, Rizka Andalusia and Director of Pharmaceutical Production and Distribution Agusdini Banun attended the inauguration of PT Amarox Pharma Global's anti-viral drug factory in the Delta Silicon 3 area, Central Cikarang, Bekasi Regency on January 14, 2022.The government continues to strive to ensure the availability of COVID-19 drugs in the country, especially in facing the next wave of the COVID-19 virus. In line with this, the government is preparing new anti-viral drugs including molnupiravir and paxlovid.
Friday, January 14, 2022, Minister of Health Budi G. Sadikin accompanied by the Director General of Pharmaceuticals and Medical Devices, Rizka Andalusia and the Director of Pharmaceutical Production and Distribution Agusdini Banun attended the inauguration of PT Amarox Pharma Global's anti-viral drug factory in the Delta Silicon 3 area, Central Cikarang, Bekasi Regency.
Currently, the Ministry of Health has secured 400 thousand molnupiravir tablets that have been prepared by PT Amarox, which will also produce its own molnupiravir, which is planned to start in April or May 2022.
Minister Budi asked PT Amarox to also produce paxlovid to deal with the next pandemic. “Some drug variants that we definitely need are anti-viral drugs such as favipiravir and molnupiravir. If we can immediately get access to these drugs, it will be very helpful for handling COVID-19,” he said after the inauguration.
Budi said that Indonesia is currently in the stage of entering the next wave of Omicron variants. The availability of COVID-19 drugs is needed to help handle the COVID-19 pandemic in Indonesia. Indonesia feels it is very important that not only the availability of COVID-19 drugs but also the manufacture of drugs is carried out domestically. Based on previous experiences when there was a spike in cases in several countries, Indonesia experienced difficulties from the logistics of sending medicines to Indonesia. “It is very important if we can produce drugs domestically and the manufacturing is also built here,” said the Minister of Health.
Minister of Health Budi appreciated the existence of PT Amarox as a provider of pharmaceutical products in Indonesia. He said there are two things that cooperation with PT Amarox is needed, namely in the short term PT Amarox can help overcome the COVID-19 pandemic and in the medium term PT Amarox can support domestic drug independence. “It is hoped that all products that are critical for our nation will be produced domestically and we will ensure that there are many drug and medical device companies in Indonesia so that if there is another pandemic, we will not depend on other countries,” he said.
