Introducing our Country Director from NLR Indonesia

Asken Sinaga is a pharmacist and used to work at a medical device manufacturer in Indonesia. After 5 years of working, he left the job in 2005 because of his concern in development works in Indonesia. Willing to equip himself with necessary skills in this new sector, he pursued his master degree in International NGOs at Webster University in the Netherlands in 2009. Since then, he has been continuously working for people in needs through multiple projects from various themes, including public health.

He became aware of leprosy in Indonesia just recently from NLR and was not happy to know that Indonesia is the third country with the highest number of new leprosy cases every year. This very much motivated him to join NLR in November 2019.

After a few months with NLR, he realised that many still needs to be done to cope with challenges in the leprosy domain. For 2020, however, he wants to focus on building innovations with partners for increasing public awareness on leprosy, while at the same time ensuring the ongoing innovations and commitments to stakeholders run well.

“Zero transmission, zero disability and zero discrimination is likely to happen in Indonesia only after leprosy has attracted public attention in the country”, said Asken.