Indonesia
Indonesia has a unique landscape that boasts over 17,000 islands and rich biodiversity, with a high number of endemic species. At the same time, the tropical country also has one of the largest populations on earth and known human-wildlife disease interfaces that include large-scale land use change and a burgeoning wildlife trade. Some areas of Indonesia are known to have high levels of wildlife consumption for food as well as the pet trade both domestically and for export. Geographic disease hotspot analyses have shown that these combined factors make Indonesia one of the world’s “hottest” areas for the risk of zoonotic disease emergence. Indonesia offers access to PREDICT priority taxa and a variety of landscape gradients and human-wildlife interfaces, including free-ranging wildlife, wildlife markets and confiscated wildlife, captive wildlife, wildlife workers and urban parks with potential human-wildlife conflict. Despite the intimate interaction of human populations and diverse wildlife species at these interfaces, Indonesia’s current capacity to conduct wildlife disease surveillance at a regional and national level is still developing, although its political will to do so is strong. The PREDICT program, in coordination with its in-country partners, seeks to fill this wildlife surveillance gap by actively engaging in field surveillance, building laboratory diagnostic capacity, and helping to institutionalize One Health in the country. EcoHealth Alliance is the program lead for the PREDICT Indonesia program, with Metabiota providing support for human disease surveillance.
Country Coordinator: Dr. Drh. Joko Pamungkas, M.Sc.
Country Coordinator Dr. Joko (Imung) Pamungkas leads the in-country PREDICT Indonesia efforts. Dr. Pamungkas is the Director of the Primate Research Center at the Bogor Agricultural Institute (IPB) as well as a Faculty member of the School of Veterinary Medicine at IPB. He has formal training in the Veterinary Sciences and Virology, receiving his Drh. in Veterinary Medicine at IPB, his M.Sc. in Pathobiology at the University of Washington (Seattle), and his Ph.D. in Biomedical Sciences at the University of Indonesia. He has also completed certificate programs in Retrovirus Diagnostics and Primate Medicine, Diagnostic Training In Filoviruses, Laboratory Animal Sciences, Animal Welfare, and Laboratory Biosafety, including programs through the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
