Introduction

Stretching across the equator for nearly 5,000 km in the South East Asia and Oceania regions, the Republic Indonesia is the largest archipelago state in the world comprising of 17,508 islands. It is the world’s fourth most populous country with an estimated population of around 237 million people.

Among other countries in Asia, Indonesia was hit the hardest by the East Asian financial crisis in 1997–98. While the economic was recovered after several years, the growth rate was never sufficient to leverage employment rate. Stagnant income growth and the increase of fuel and staple products have worsened poverty level.

As demands for basic needs of the poor remain unfulfilled adequately due to financial limitation, access to appropriate health care has never been considered as priority. Even worst sometime, accessing health service has not even been considered as an opportunity for the poor to have. This condition has created larger problem: the lack of knowledge and awareness the people has about health and its significance, which further becomes the reason of many diseases the people is now facing.

Being a developing country, Indonesia is still struggling with efforts to provide its people equitable access in many sectors such as education, justice, and health, in particular for the most poor and underprivileged. For health sector, the most effective way to assist them is done through what we call Bakti Sosial (social work), where health services are given directly to them, by providing them with resources needed to deal with health problems, to cure, as well as to provide knowledge to them about health.