Women, children malnourished, Unicef reports

JAKARTA (JP): Indonesian women and children's health is still poor, despite rapid economic progress over the past several years, a report reveals.

A summary of The Situation Analysis of Children and Women in Indonesia l995, a special report prepared jointly by the Indonesian government and the United Nations Children's Fund (Unicef), disclosed that maternal mortality rates (MMR) here remains very high compared to other Asian countries.

Indonesia's MMR only dropped slightly, from 450 per 100,000 live births in l986 to 425 in l992.

The current trend suggests that it will be very difficult for Indonesia to reduce the rate to 225 by l998. The Infant Mortality rate (IMR) and Under-5 Mortality Rate (U5MR), however, is declining rapidly.

Between l967 and l993, the IMR decreased from 145 to 58 per 1,000 live births and U5MR from 218 to 78 per 1,000 live births. However, this still puts Indonesia behind other Asian countries such as China, Thailand, and the Philippines, the report reveals.

Roger Shrimpton, a senior program coordinator at Unicef, said at a discussion yesterday that many Indonesian women and children, particularly those living in remote regions, do not have adequate access to medical services. He said that only a limited number of community-based health facilities, such as maternal and child health clinics, are available in the villages.

"Indonesia really faces a serious problem if women and children's health remains this poor, because the majority of its l89 million citizens are women and children," Shrimpton warned.

Lack of health care facilities, he said, is caused by the limited budget allocation for both public and health care. In l989-l993, the government only spent 2.8 percent of the country's GDP on health, roughly half of that spent in other countries with comparable per capita incomes.

Budget

According to the report, the government also increased the budget for "Women in Development" programs from Rp 21,722 million in l982/l983 to Rp 64,388 million in l992/l993.

Almost 90 percent of the total amount went to the Family Welfare Movement (PKK), which works specifically with the poor in village development.

Despite these facts, the report says, Indonesian women and children still face serious nutrition problems. Malnutrition is the cause of 60 percent of all deaths in the under-five age bracket.

Although food energy intake per capita is generally high (around 2100 kcal), 63.5 percent of the country's females still suffer from anemia due to bad diet. In addition, more than a quarter of all children and pregnant women suffer from a lack of iodine, the report says.

A large number of malnourished pregnant women will give birth to underweight babies.

Around 4.5 million babies are born a year, and the incidence of underweight babies is estimated at 15 percent. However, only 37 percent of children are actually weighed at birth.

The number of children defined as moderately and severely underweight in l993 remained high at 40 percent, the highest figure among ASEAN countries, the report says.

Abdullah Cholil, Assistant to State Minister for Women's Roles, argued that the health of women and children was a serious issue for the nation.

"This is not a problem of the ministry of health or other institutions alone. This is our problem. We are all responsible for improving their welfare," Cholil said. (raw)