In 1997 and 1998, Japan provided Indonesia with emergency supplies of food, medical supplies, and drugs to aid people affected by the country's economic crisis and social turmoil. Afterward, Japan also conducted monitoring to ascertain whether emergency aid was reaching needy people.

Sanglah General Hospital in the city of Denpasar was one of the institutions to which drugs and medical supplies had been distributed, and to which JOCV nursing personnel had been assigned. It was confirmed that the hospital's drug stockroom had received a dozen or so cardboard boxes bearing the ODA logo and that hospital staffers were managing stockroom inventory on a ledger basis.

Also, supplies of kidney dialysis filters and fluid provided through the emergency aid were being utilized by the hospital's dialysis ward, which had about a dozen beds, all occupied. Immediately after Indonesia's economic crisis began, prices of imported medical supplies spiraled to almost sixfold their pre-crisis levels. Some poor patients died, because they were no longer able to afford the dialysis treatment they needed.

However, nurses at Sanglah General Hospital stated that prices had dropped back to about threefold after emergency supplies from Japan began to arrive. Also, the hospital's drug dispensary was distributing drugs donated by Japan at no cost to patients who presented proof of their impoverished economic status.

One young man who spoke broken Japanese repeatedly thanked the Japanese personnel at the hospital for monitoring purposes.