Wooden furniture companies in Indonesia have doubled their income after taking part in training courses to boost production efficiency and improve overseas opportunities.
Furniture—predominantly made from teak or mahogany—is one of Indonesia’s big exports. But even in the region of Jepara, known in particular for its carved furniture, the manufacturing industry has been marked by poor production efficiency, resulting in less recovered timber and lower overall quality of furniture products.
Indonesian street vendors are the new muses of Australian and Indonesian architecture students, who are creating sustainable shelters to help vendors keep trading in style.
Known as Pedagang Kaki Lima (‘five legs’), the travelling street vendors not only play a crucial role in Indonesia’s economy, they’ve also become an icon of resilience and bravery following the January 2016 Jakarta terrorist attacks—where photos of vendors and the meme “keep calm and BBQ satay” were shared widely on Twitter.
Continue reading Trading in style: students designing shelters for Indonesia’s street vendors
• Giving start-ups a fair go
• Better shelters for street vendors
• Bringing science to the community
• How did Indonesia’s furniture companies boost product efficiency?
Australia isn’t the only one pushing to be an “innovation nation,” with Indonesia announcing a government-backed ‘1,000 start-ups movement’ in mid-2016.
School-aged children are surrounded by messages about food and nutrition, from shop signs to brand advertising. Linguists from Indonesia and Australia have developed a new way of studying how this affects them, using smartphones and clever analysis.
In a project financed by The Australia-Indonesia Centre and led by Dr Sisilia Halimi of Universitas Indonesia and Professor Lesley Harbon of the University of Technology Sydney, researchers used their phones to take pictures of the ‘linguistic landscape’ around schools and their surrounds, in fact anywhere written text was evident.
During the 2009 Black Saturday fires—Australia’s worst bushfire disaster to date—Indonesian experts headed to Victoria to help identify the bodies of the 173 victims.
Their support came as part of a collaborative initiative between the Victorian Institute of Forensic Medicine (VIFM), and the Department of Police Medicine of the Indonesia National Police (Dokpol) which saw 20 Indonesian experts in forensic pathology, forensic odontology (which involves examining dental evidence) and DNA analysis work alongside VIFM and Victorian Police for over two months.
Continue reading Identifying victims in the Black Saturday bushfires
Around 100 million Indonesians don’t have health coverage, despite a bold national overhaul in 2014 of Indonesian healthcare aimed at bringing all the historically-fragmented insurance schemes together into the Jaminan Kesehatan Nasional (JKN), or National Health Insurance Programme. Indonesian and Australian researchers want to know how this can be improved.
The scheme sought to capture those who fall through the gaps, to achieve universal health coverage for all by 2019. Referred to as the ‘missing middle,’ they’re the people who aren’t destitute and receiving government help, but are still too poor to afford basic healthcare.
Planning a nation’s health is challenging when you don’t have accurate information on the causes of death.
The Indonesian National Institute for Health Research and Development is working with nine regional universities and the Australian National University to build capacity for a national mortality register.
Credit for banner image: Sanofi Pasteur creative commons
Indonesia is rolling out a five-in-one vaccine that they plan to deliver in a single shot to every Indonesian child to protect them against diphtheria, tetanus, whooping cough, hepatitis B and Haemophilus influenzae type B (Hib).
The rollout is supported by the Australian Government through GAVI, the global vaccine alliance. The vaccine is manufactured by Bio Farma, who also hope to add rotavirus to the vaccines in the future.
Testing for flu, malarial drug resistance, and identifying the Bali bombers are all outcomes of an Australia-Indonesia medical research initiative that begun in 1997 and continues today.
The original Australia-Indonesia Medical Research Initiative agreement between the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research (WEHI) in Melbourne and the Eijkman Institute for Molecular Biology in Jakarta was conceived and funded by the Indonesian Minister of Research and Technology and the Australian Government, and designed to boost the capacity of the Indonesian labs while enabling more transfer of ideas and skills between the two countries.
Vaccines work best when they include an adjuvant, something that boosts your immune system’s reaction to the vaccine.
University of Melbourne researchers have recreated a fragment of a bacteria protein that activates white blood cells.
In 2012, they signed a research agreement with Bio Farma to help them turn their idea into a novel vaccine platform that could enhance vaccines for hepatitis, diphtheria, tetanus, whooping cough, and other diseases.
