ABSTRACT
The public health is a very complex problem since it does not only relate to medical factor but also to environmental, social, economy, cultural and political factors. What happened in the nineteenth century on the health condition of Java society reflected the misunderstanding and the politics of discrimination of the Netherlands-India government on the problem. As a result, the Netherlands-India\u27s policy for public health was just a responsive and gradual action which emphasized only to minority society group. This phenomenon showed that the modern medical sciences brought by the westerners were just for the sake of their military health. As for the westerners themselves, this was intended to protect their group from diseases in native society.
In the early twentieth century, there were changes in colonial policy for public health in Java. First, the establishment of a government institution in charge of public health that led to the systematic handling of public health. Second, the effort to expand the access of curative care from hospitals for the native society was established. Accordingly, related to ethical politics, the colonial government implemented subsidy policy for health public by establishing new hospitals from 1910 to 1920. In the early 1920s, this policy was unsuccessful to help access the native society to get health service from the hospitals. As a result, the government changed the method and orientation of its policy by giving more access to poor society. However, since the Netherlands-India experienced the economic depression in the 1930s, this subsidy policy did not run as expected. Since then, with the decreasing budget for health subsidy, the government implemented the third policy, i.e. decentralization of health.
Key words: public health, polio/, subsid
