Indonesia
We work with the government of Indonesia to provide quality health care for mothers and newborns across the country, especially in the private sector.
Indonesia is a populous, middle-income island nation with the largest economy in Southeast Asia. The country has made significant strides to achieve key development goals, including reducing child mortality. With estimates that one Indonesian mother1 and seven newborns2 die from preventable causes every hour, the government of Indonesia has called for increased attention on the health of mothers and their newborns across the country, focusing on areas where disparities are felt the most, such as among populations vulnerable to poverty, health inequities, and other social and economic barriers.
MOMENTUM supports the government of Indonesia to provide quality health care for mothers and newborns. This partnership is key to helping Indonesian women and their children have access to the high-quality services they need now and well into the future.
Improving Maternal and Newborn Health Care
Newborns and young children in Indonesia are surviving at higher rates, but many mothers still suffer and die due to preventable causes associated with childbirth, such as post-partum hemorrhage, high blood pressure, and infection.3 An increasing number of Indonesian mothers give birth at private institutions,4 making private sector engagement key to improving delivery outcomes. MOMENTUM partners with private institutions to help them build skills to provide high-quality routine and emergency care for mothers and their babies.
MOMENTUM also engages with local governments within Indonesia in their efforts to increase demand for maternal and newborn health services, especially around referrals for specialized or emergency obstetric care. To help mothers and babies access the lifesaving care they need quickly, MOMENTUM helps community health workers connect mothers to facility-based care, and helps standardize the referral process to make these connections more accessible.
Increasing Engagement Between the Private and Public Health Sectors
Indonesia’s private health sector is expanding, creating an urgent need to improve coordination between the public and private health sectors so women and children continue to receive quality care no matter where they seek services. MOMENTUM supports efforts to:
- Improve the quality of care delivered by private facilities and providers.
- Help private facilities run effectively and hold them accountable to quality-driven standards.
- Build private and public providers’ technical and clinical capacity.
- Support private and public providers and facilities in making decisions using quality health data.
- Foster relationships between the Ministry of Health and the private sector to encourage collaborative, informed, and effective decision-making on health policies.
- Build private facilities’ capacity to meet Ministry of Health accreditation standards.
Reporting and Tracking Maternal and Newborn Deaths
Indonesia’s health facilities use the Maternal and Perinatal Death Notification tool, a digital reporting application, to report and track maternal and newborn deaths across the country. MOMENTUM assesses how the data from this application can help improve quality of care. We also support several districts in their efforts to collect and report quality, accurate, and timely data for health decision-making.
MOMENTUM Country and Global Leadership focuses on improving primary care and health referral services for Indonesian mothers and newborns.
MOMENTUM Private Healthcare Delivery works to increase the effectiveness of Indonesia’s private health sector and facilitate engagement with the public sector to provide quality maternal and newborn health services.
References
- USAID. Acting on the Call: Preventing Child & Maternal Deaths: A Focus on the Role of Nurses and Midwives. 2020. https://www.usaid.gov/sites/default/files/USAID_2020_Horizontal_TAG_V12_508optV3.pdf.
- United Nations Inter-agency Group for Child Mortality Estimation (UNIGME). Levels & Trends in Child Mortality: Report 2020, Stillbirth and Child Mortality Estimates. New York: United Nations Children’s Fund, 2020. [Updated every year.] https://childmortality.org
- Soedarmono, Y.S. December 2016. “The Indonesian Approach to Reduce Maternal Mortality.” ISBT Science Series 12 (1). https://doi.org/10.1111/voxs.12317
- Yap, Wei Aun, et al. 2017. “Revealing the Missing Link: Private Sector Supply-Side Readiness for Primary Maternal Health Services in Indonesia.” Washington, DC: World Bank. https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/handle/10986/27469