Expert says ignorance leads to neglect of women's health

Expert says ignorance leads to neglect of women's health

Ati Nurbaiti, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

Millions of teenagers are sexually active in the country but
official ignorance or a head-in-the-sand attitude is leading to a
continuing neglect of their needs, an expert on public health
says.

Ford Foundation country representative Meiwita Budiharsana
said Central Statistics Agency 2002-2003 data estimated 51
percent of teenagers had already had sexual intercourse before
they were 19.

Meiwita was among speakers at a discussion held by the Women's
Research Institute on Tuesday.

This resulted in early pregnancies and the possibility of
women having more than 10 children by the age of 35.

"But it's impossible to talk about the needs even for
counseling and safe contraceptives," let alone safe abortions,
she told a discussion on gender consciousness in budgeting.

Abortions are illegal here and information on contraceptives
can only be aimed at married couples. "So we just let these young
people become sexually active without counseling and without
preventing pregnancies, while unsafe abortions continue," Meiwita
said.

The lack of essential public health services was reflected in
the maternal mortality rate, which remained high at 380 per
100,000 births as of 2002, she said. This was not surprising as
there were only an average of 71 midwives for every 100,000 women
of reproductive age.

"Regents don't want to pay for midwives," she said. "Even if
they (the midwives) worked night and day they wouldn't be able to
cater to 100,000 women."

The tendency to allocate only a little toward education in the
national budget also worsened the problem, she said. If a
district had five elementary schools but no secondary school,
"would parents really let their eldest daughter continue
education far from home and have no one to look after her younger
siblings?"

Ignoring the health and education needs for young people only
helped perpetuate poverty in the country. "There are women who
really want access to contraceptives, but cannot afford it,"
Meiwita said.

Despite such difficulties, there was at least one poor area
with a relatively high allocation for public services -- Jembrana
in Bali. Sociologist Alexander Irwan of the Tifa Foundation said
schooling was free in Jembrana, despite an only Rp 8.5 billion
allocation from the 2003 budget. Meanwhile, parents still paid
for their children's education in mineral-rich North Aceh, which
had Rp 138.6 billion allocated for education, Alexander said.

As long as schooling remained a cost, parents tended to push
their sons -- not daughters -- into education, he said.

Other officials who spoke at the meeting detailed how a lack
of transparency led to the absence of meaningful public
participation in the formulation of budgets.

"A colleague (of mine) once had to steal a copy of the state
budget (to find out what was allocated to health in his area),"
one participant said.

Another said a legislator once quipped to her that the budget
was "a state secret."