UNAIR NEWS – “In Southeast Asia, only the data of Indonesia is not available in WHO. China is bigger and has more ethnics, but it has got the data. It motivates us in a way,” Dr. R Darmawan Setijanto, drg., M.Kes, the Dean of Faculty of Dental Medicine said during his speech in MoU Signing between Faculty of Dental Medicine (FKG) UNAIR and Faculty of Dentistry , Thammasat University, Thailand, on Monday, March 6.

The unavailability of Indonesian dental health data in WHO will affect the support the country get. Therefore, academicians of FKG UNAIR were compelled to provide the data. The effort was made by establishing partnership with Faculty of Dentistry, Thammasat University, Thailand

MoU between FKG UNAIR and Thammasat University affirmed some agreements such as student exchange, staff exchange, and joint research. In the occasion, Thammasat University represented by Prof. Prathip Phantumvait DDS, Ph.D

“The most important thing is collaboration research. We would like to provide data for WHO as there is no data in WHO, especially for oral health. Later we also will collaborate with Faculty of Dentistry in Niigata. The fund allocation will be used for research collaboration with many faculties in Korea and Japan which has a lot of publications so it will make our publication better in quality. It is in line with our rector’s command,” Darmawan said.

Ministry of health Republic of Indonesia appreciates the partnership between two parties as Dental medicine Indonesia do not have data in WHO which is required by Ministry of Health.

“Hopefully, we can have the world data. From this partnership; we will recommend other faculties to establish partnerships to increase the quality of research and publication. Now, we have some partnership with many dental medicine schools, such as Universitas Hangtuah, Universitas Indonesia and many more. We also have dean of dental medicine association, which is aimed to build efficient and effective movement,” he said.

Similar partnerships have been establishing partnership by FKG UNAIR. Previously, FKG UNAIR have made partnerships with reputable dental medicine in Japan, Malaysia and Korea. (*)

Author: Pradita Desyanti
Editor: Binti Q. Masruroh