Women, children malnourished, Unicef reports

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)