RI needs to work harder to save mothers, children

RI needs to work harder to save mothers, children

The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

Despite a promising decrease in the maternal and infant mortality
rates in the country, the targets set for Indonesia by a United
Nations program are still far away, the experts say.

The latest data shows Indonesia's maternal mortality rate at
307 per 100,000 births and the infant death rate at 35 per 1,000
births, as compared with 334 and 46 respectively in 1997.

The Ministry of Health and the World Health Organization (WHO)
noted the accomplishment but stressed that Indonesia's rates,
while improving, still kept it at the bottom of the list of
Southeast Asian countries.

The UN-sponsored Millenium Development Goals program has set
targets of 125 and 23 for maternal and infant mortality rates for
Indonesia by 2015.

"It will indeed be quite difficult to meet the deadline
without applying significant efforts. We need to immediately work
to resolve the direct and indirect causes of such regrettable
statistics," the ministry's director general for communal health
Azrul Azwar said during a WHO-hosted discussion recently.

The discussion was held to commemorate this year's World
Health Day, which fell on Thursday, with the subtitle: "Has
Enough Attention Been Given to Save the Lives of Mothers and
Children?"

While direct causes of mortality included hemorrhaging,
eclampsia and complications from abortions, the indirect causes
were more fundamental -- poverty, the poor status of health
facilities in terms of quality and quantity and the lack of
transportation.

Azrul said improving the welfare of the poor was one essential
measure to ensure they had better access to health facilities.

"It generally boils down to the economic conditions of the
people that affects their capacity and capability to access
health service, such as doctors and professional midwives.
Therefore, the need to provide health service as accessible as
possible is a priority. But the health ministry receives a far
lower amount of the budget than other ministries," he said.

The tight budget, Azrul said, meant there were few midwives in
many areas nationwide, leading to unassisted and dangerous births
in many cases.

Since 2001, the ministry had been running a series of programs
to make pregnancies safer.

The three key elements were to provide trained personnel to
assist all births, provide adequate services for all obstetric
and neonatal complications, and provide information on pregnancy
prevention and miscarriage complications for women, he said.

Azrul said the budget had constrained the ministry's work. He
called for the public to use the available facilities.

"All pregnant women are advised to monitor their pregnancies,
and after birth to ensure the babies get everything their bodies
need."

"Husbands are also advised to be considerate during pregnancy,
while on the government's part, we will try to prioritize and to
pay more attention toward these issues," he said.