Dessy Sagita – Indonesia's infant mortality rate matches that of significantly poorer Bangladesh, and blame for the alarmingly high rate lies with the government, an activist says.

World Vision campaign director Asteria Aritonang said on Thursday that the mortality rate in Indonesia was due to the government's failures.

"The problems are almost the same in every country, which are leadership, budget allocations and policies, such as regional autonomy and distribution of paramedics," she said.

Asteria lamented that Indonesia's infant mortality rate matched that of Bangladesh, saying that Indonesia has an income per capita of $3,000 while Bangladesh's stands at $700.

"How can Indonesia, a country with a per capita income almost five times higher than Bangladesh, have the same infant mortality rate. It should be much lower," Asteria said.

The rate of infant mortality in Indonesia reached 134,000 in 2011, official figures show. The rate is almost the same in Afghanistan and Ethiopia, where income per capita is even lower than in Bangladesh.

Asteria said that geographic and economic factors also contributed to the rate. But the rate could have been minimized, with strong leadership and the right policies, she added.

"The regional autonomy system should've contributed a better result because the regional administrations know the most suitable policies for their regions," Asteria said. "If the leaders were for the people, they would've done their best."

Slamet Riyadi Yuwono, the Health Ministry's director general for nutrition and child and maternal health, agreed that the autonomous system often slowed the central government's health programs.

"We no longer have regional health offices. We only have health agencies that are under the control of the governors and district heads," he said.

Under the autonomous system, a regional head can replace paramedics that had received training from the Health Ministry and the decision often disrupts the continuity of a program, he said.

In a global competitiveness index report in June, the World Economic Forum said health care could become a major barrier in Indonesia's push for economic development.

"A high infant mortality rate, the burden of communicable diseases and the prevalence of malnutrition highlight the worrisome situation," the WEF's executive summary said. Indonesia ranked 99th in health out of 139 countries assessed by the Switzerland-based international organization.

Hasbullah Thabrany, a health expert and professor at University of Indonesia, said a deterioration in public health was looming because the government only spent 1.1 percent of its estimated gross domestic product for this year on public health care.

That compares to 2.8 percent on subsidies, mostly for energy, which stood at Rp 188 trillion ($21.9 billion) in this year's state budget.