Jakarta – Indonesia needs more dedicated midwives to help reach maternal and infant mortality targets set by the United Nations' Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) by 2015, a meeting heard Tuesday.
Listiani Ritawati, a midwife from Sambirejo village in Ngawen district, Gunungkidul regency, Yogyakarta, said the lack of clean water in her village had led to a worsening health situation for pregnant women.
"We lack clean water because the soil in the area is all limestone," she said in Jakarta on the sidelines of a conference for the selection of candidates for the Srikandi Award.
The award is conferred on outstanding midwives who contribute to reducing maternal and infant mortality rates across the country.
Listiani is one of 10 candidates for the award, which is handed out each year by the Indonesian Midwives Association (IBI), the Health Ministry and PT Sari Husada. The three winning candidates will be announced Wednesday.
Listiani said more than 150 people in her neighborhood unit previously had to walk up to 2 kilometers to fetch clean water from a well in another neighborhood unit. Once there, she added, they also had to queue many hours to get the water.
Listiani then pointed out the case of a pregnant woman, out fetching water, who fell from her motorcycle at a bend in the road. She suffered severe bleeding and had a miscarriage.
"That was the point at which I realized our neighborhood unit urgently needed a 75-meter-deep well for clean water, to prevent such accidents ever happening again," she said. However, she added, this was not easy because the well cost Rp 25 million (US$2,600) to build.
"Most people in the area are poor; they scrape a living as farmers, and most don't have a senior high education," Listiani said.
Many children in the village also suffered from diarrhea due to the lack of clean water, she said. "If access to clean water remained out of reach, the quality of women's and children's health would have declined, and their lives would have been in danger," she said.
Listiani also said she and a new graduate midwife on a temporary posting in the local community were the only health workers in the area, handling childbirths for the 874-hectare village that had a population of more than 7,000 people. "She's my assistant, and together we can serve around 40 patients a day," she said.
The well was eventually dug in the village last September, with funding from the IBI and Sari Husada to recognize midwives making outstanding efforts to reduce maternal and infant mortality rates. As a result, Listiani said, the number of people suffering from diarrhea had dropped to only two patients over the past four months, down from 15 in the same period last year.
IBI board member Ruslidjah said what Listiani had done highlighted the significance of midwives for the country as a whole. She said Indonesia lacked skilled midwives, who were badly needed in many areas across the archipelago to help reduce rates of disease and mortality among infants and mothers.
"The lack of midwives in remote areas, especially in the eastern part of the country, is behind the low quality of health of the people there, as well as the increased number of dying women and babies," Ruslidjah said, adding there were only 100,000 midwives across the country.
Indonesia expects to achieve a maternal mortality rate of 102 per 100,000 live births by 2015, down from the current rate of 228 per 100,000 live births. It also expects to achieve an infant mortality rate of 23 per 1,000 live births by 2015, down from the current 34 per 1,000 live births. (nia)