A descriptive study entitled "Health Manpower Policy in Indonesia" had been conducted from April 1993 to March 1994. The study was focused on analyzing health manpower policy documents such as National Acts, Presidential Decrees, Ministerial Decrees, etc. There were 273 documents which had been analyzed. The results of the study are the followings. Most of the policy documents (52%) contain operational policies, while the rest 22% contain technical policies, 20% contain general policies, and 6% contain national policies.Most of the operational policies (79%) were made by Minister of Health, 4% made jointly by Minister of Health and other, and 17% by others. Technical policies which are supposed to be made by Echelon I or II officials, mostly (68%) were made by Minister of Health. It reveals that delegation of authority in policy formulation in the Ministry of Health is not effective yet.There are 10% of technical policies which were derived from other technical policies, and 55% of operational policies which were derived from other operational policies. Around 54% of the operational policies had no technical policies.Health manpower policy is highly concentrated on utilization (75%). There are only 19.5% policies on education, 1% on planning, 1.5% on information system, and 0.5% on research. It means that health manpower planning, including its research and information system supports are still neglected.There are 59% policies on medical and nursing education and only 24% on public health workers education. From utilization side, there are 58% policies on the utilization of medical and nursing professionals and only 12% policies on public health workers utilization. It reveals that policies on planning, education, as well as utilization of public health workers still need to be improved to reach a balance between public health services and medical services.
