Jakarta – More women in Indonesia died during childbirth last year than in any other Southeast Asian country, a health ministry official said Monday.

East Timor's health ministry Thursday formally confirmed the territory's first cases of HIV/AIDS infection.

Fitri Wulandari, Jakarta – Infant formula producers denied allegations on Wednesday that they had exploited breast-feeding experts to promote their products."Instead of taking advantage

Jakarta – Most of the soft drinks and snacks sold in Indonesia's elementary school canteens use textile dyes and are contaminated with the E.

Jakarta – The government called on Friday for more international aid to fulfill the need for free distribution of contraceptives to 8.25 million poor and needy couples next year.

Peter Kerr, Jakarta – Soon after giving birth earlier this year in a major central Jakarta hospital, nursing staff gave Indra a pack containing infant milk formula, a measuring cup and

Paula Doran – For half of his 30 years Domingos lived chained to a wooden bench behind his village home in the hills of East Timor.

Mark Dodd, Dill – The United Nations in East Timor will encourage staff to volunteer for HIV tests but cannot make them compulsory on human rights grounds.

Rod McGuirk, Darwin – The HIV virus had taken hold in East Timor and spread into Australia, a Dili-based doctor said today.

Jakarta – The city's hospitals are struggling to admit new patients and are having a hard time treating existing ones because a collapsed dike has caused a shortage in clean water suppl

Jakarta – East Timorese refugees are dying from a rapidly spreading diarrhoea epidemic in fetid camps in Indonesian-ruled West Timor, a Catholic aid group said Monday.

Devi Asmarani, Jakarta – They wanted perfect noses, fuller lips and voluptuous breasts. What they ended up with instead were grotesque snouts, disfigured lips and breast cancer.

The country's long and brutal economic crisis is sending increasing numbers of people living in the capital insane, a local newspaper said on Friday.

Jakarta – Head of the Food and Drug Control Agency Sampurno revealed on Monday that the government would increase the prices of generic drugs by some 15 percent starting April this year

Jakarta – Abortion is on the rise in Indonesia, especially among unmarried women, and has now reached an alarming level, a family planning group said yesterday.

Anastasia Vrachnos, Jakarta – "Vasectomies! Vasectomies!" screams a bright-red poster in the white, shiny waiting room of the Family Clinic. But the words miss their mark.

Jakarta – Many Indonesians are dying each year of tobacco-related diseases, but the country's heavy dependence on revenues contributed by the clove cigarette industry is hampering effor

Jakarta – The family planning (KB) program in Indonesia has long been perceived as a birth control measure, but ignores the reproductive health of women, who are the backbone of the nat

Denis Peters and Linda McSweeny, Canberra – Australian unions and a prominent law firm have warned that workers rebuilding East Timor could be exposed to asbestos contamination.

Jakarta – The official number of HIV/AIDS cases in Indonesia now stands at 1,283, although health experts predicted the real figure could be as high as 350,000 or more, a senior officia

Richel Dursin, Bandung – In a classroom full of senior high school students, Budhi Setiawan was giving a lecture on reproductive health when a 16-year-old girl raised her hand and asked

Dili – Catholic Bishop Carlos Ximenes Belo, East Timor's spiritual leader, has written to the UN administration and foreign health aid groups demanding a stop to the use of "artificial"

Dili – Is there a conspiracy of silence within our media about conditions in East Timor?

Jakarta – Graphic campaigns promoting condom use to prevent the spread of HIV/AIDS have failed to change sexual behavior, an expert said.

Jakarta – The government of President Abdurrahman Wahid has expressed concern over the increasing number of abortions in Indonesia, having noted that at least 2.3 million women resorted

Jakarta – State Minister of Women's Empowerment Khofifah Indah Parawansa revealed on Monday that 30 percent of 3.5 million babies born in the last two years had serious malnutrition.

Vannessa Hearman, Dili – To come face to face with public health services in East Timor is a daunting thing.

Jakarta – Police found the remains of at least 34 foetuses yesterday at a burial site on the southern outskirts of Jakarta.

Jakarta – Abortion is strictly prohibited under both the Criminal Code and the Health Law. But despite the legislation, women continue to seek abortions.

Jakarta – The life expectancy of the Irianese is about 40 years, the shortest among ethnic groups in Indonesia, due to malnutrition and a poor health service, a senior local official sa

Jakarta – The number of known hard drug addicts in Jakarta has soared by at least 400 percent in the past three years, and the real increase could be much larger, a newspaper report sai

Jakarta – The Jakarta city administration has rounded up about 2,000 insane people from the streets over the past week and is now holding them at Panti Laras Asylum in Cipayung, East Ja

Novan Iman Santosa, Karawang – Like many AIDS volunteers around the globe, Abdurrachman Saibun, 25, is busy at the end of the year preparing to commemorate World AIDS Day, which falls o

Jakarta – The spread of the Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) in the country remains unknown after 12 years of efforts to trace people infected with the deadly virus, a health official

Jakarta – Drug abuse has become a major social ill in Indonesia, especially among the young, a report said Sunday adding without urgent preventive action, "a new catastrophe" was in the

Bangkok – Indonesia is suffering severe food shortages and growing malnutrition brought on by rising social unrest and a deep economic crisis, the United Nations said in a report.

Karen Polglaze, Dili – Behind a drooping curtain in a poorly-lit clinic in rural East Timor, a technician armed with a microscope and a belief in the World Health Organisation (WHO) is

Tomi Soetjipto, Jakarta – Around half of Indonesia's children aged under five suffer from malnutrition as economic crisis plunges families into poverty, a UNICEF official said.

Sydney – Indonesia has rejected Australia's offer of a surgical team for East Timor, despite evidence of a looming health crisis in the province, Foreign Minister Alexander Downer said

Lindsay Murdoch, Dili – Warnings by East Timor aid workers and political leaders of a pending food and health disaster have been reinforced by a grim diagnosis from the only foreign doc

Jakarta – The number of abortions in Indonesia had reached an estimated one million cases a year, most of them carried out on teenagers, an expert told a medical meeting yesterday.

Bogor – An expert has expressed concern that the rood crisis and malnutrition affecting an untold number of babies in various Indonesian areas will lead to the birth of stupid generatio

Jenny Grant, Jakarta – The mental and physical growth of a generation of children is under threat as Indonesia's economic crisis worsens.

New York – East Timor's life expentancy is less than 50 years, according to a UN report released in New York on Wednesday.

Jakarta – Health workers in Indonesia's capital are running low on blood for transfusions in a dengue fever outbreak, blamed for at least 422 deaths nationwide this year.

Lisbon – The head of the external delegation of East Timorese resistance movement FRETILIN warned on Saturday for the shortage of basic foodstuffs in East Timor, due to the "economic, s

Kafil Yamin, Jakarta – Child malnutrition continues to be a blot on Indonesia's impressive record of poverty reduction in the last three decades.

Louise Williams, Jakarta – It's close to 3am and business is brisk behind the heavy velvet curtain shielding the back room from the jarring beat on the crowded dance floor of one of Jak

Lewa Pardomuan, Jakarta – Military helicopters flew rice and noodles to famine-stricken areas in Indonesia's remote Irian Jaya province on Monday as government officials said food short