50,000 villages to get midwives

JAKARTA: The government will send more than 50,000 midwives to villages across the country this year to reduce maternal and infant mortality rates.

The Ministry of Health's secretary-general, Hidayat Hardjoprawito, told a meeting of reporters and Swedish Ambassador Mikael Lindstrom recently that the midwife program, initiated five years ago, aimed to have midwives assist most rural women give birth.

Fifty-four thousand of the country's 67,000 kampongs were villages, he said.

Hidayat said the program to slash maternal and infant mortality rates seemed to be on track given the poor education of rural women and the country's size and population of 200 million.

The government aims to reduce maternal mortality rates from the current 460 deaths for every 100,000 live births to 225 for every 100,000 by the end of the sixth development plan period in 1999.

The ministry's director general of community health, Nyoman Kumara Rai, said in the discussion last Wednesday that bleeding and infection caused the high maternal mortality rate.

Nyoman said the campaign against infant mortality was "relatively successful" because the rate had fallen from 145 deaths for every 100,000 births in the late 1960s to 58 deaths for every 100,000 births.

He cited immunization drives, the battle against diarrhea and treatment of acute respiratory infections as effective ways to cut infant mortality rates.

Lindstrom said a new software system would be used to improve the national computerized registration of medicine, replacing software installed in 1988.

Sweden enjoys a low infant mortality rate of five deaths for every 1,000 births because of good technology, efficiency and a comprehensive social welfare system, which is derived from income taxes of between 30 percent and 50 percent.

In Sweden, hospital midwives handle 99 percent of births. Doctors only intervene if there are complications. (01)