Maternal mortality rate investigation

Maternal mortality rate investigation

JAKARTA: An international organization has agreed to research
Indonesia's high maternal mortality rate to help formulate a
strategy to reduce the death rate.

The research will be conduced by the Initiative for Maternal
Mortality Program Assessment (IMMPACT) in cooperation with the
University of Indonesia.

Minister of Health Achmad Sujudi, during the launch of the
program, said efforts to curb the death rate since 1988 had
failed to live up to expectations.

Figures released in 1997 show that every year 17,000 mothers
die during or after delivering a baby. The figure is triple the
average rate in Southeast Asia and 50 times the rate in developed
countries.

IMMPACT consists of researchers from the University of
Aberdeen in Scotland, England's London School of Hygiene and
Tropical Medicine and the University of York, John Hopkins
University in the United States, and the Institute of Tropical
Medicine in Belgium. -JP