“There’s a positive correlation between good IPKM performance and increase in life expectancy,” Health Minister Nila Moeloek said on Monday, as quoted by state news agency Antara. 

The 2018 IPKM, issued by the Health Ministry’s Research and Development Center, showed that Bali outperformed other provinces across the country last year, scoring 0.6889 on the index. Scores that are closer to one indicates improvement in public health. 

The IPKM is based on 30 health-related indicators, including health services, non-communicable diseases, reproductive health and environmental health. 

According to a report from CNN Indonesia, Bali’s high performance can be attributed to its relatively good health infrastructure, which also includes immunization coverage. 

Three regencies and one city in Bali – Gianyar, Tabanan, Badung, and Denpasar – are among the highest performers in this year’s index in the health infrastructure category. 

“When our environment is good, the healthier our surroundings, [when there is] clean water and proper sanitation; when all these aspects are good, we will be healthier, and the healthier we are, the longer we will live,” Nila was quoted as saying. 

It might be worth highlighting here that Bali’s position as the highest performer in the country has remained the same compared to the 2013 IPKM, when it scored 0.6503. At the other end of the scale is Papua province, the worst performer in both 2018 and 2013, scoring 0.4888 and 0.4387, respectively.  

“There’s a big gap in 2018 [compared to other provinces] for Papua. This is something we need to pay attention to because in the past five years, Papua Province did not really see an improvement,” the report says. 

Read more news and updates from Bali here.