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