The story of little Neni

By Dorian Druelle, UNICEF France

Neni (center) is smiling with her classmates as she is now no longer suffering from diarrhoeal symptoms.
©UNICEF Indonesia/2013/Druelle 

Neni is a 10 years old Indonesian girl, but she has the size of a 7 or 8 years old child. Her fragile body bears the mark of stunting, a manifestation of chronic malnutrition which affects more than half of all children under five years of age in the region where she lives and more than a third in all children in Indonesia. She will probably wear the effects of stunting all her life, but her bright smile and sparkling eyes seem anticorrelated to her underweight; Neni is a shining child.

More children than ever before are surviving past their fifth birthday

Saving children’s lives will benefit entire societies 

By Angela Kearney, UNICEF Representative Indonesia

The opportunity to end preventable child deaths has never been greater than it is today.

Thanks to proven solutions and global and national efforts, the lives of 90 million children were saved globally in the past 22 years; children who would otherwise have died if mortality rates had remained at the same levels as in 1990.

Half as many children died in 2012 than in 1990, with the annual number of under-five deaths falling from 12.6 million in 1990 to 6.6 million in 2012.

In Indonesia, we have also witnessed remarkable progress. While in 1990, as many as 385,000 under-five children died, today, the number has fallen to 152,000. As we take a moment to savour this good news, we must also take stock and remember that we are failing the more than 400 children in Indonesia who still die needlessly every day. And we also need to be aware that although the overall reduction in child deaths is impressive, recent data show that this decline has been slowing down over the past 5 to 10 years. If the current trajectory continues, the achievement of Millennium Development Goal 4 of reducing child mortality by two thirds between 1990 and 2015 remains at risk.

SMS project improves midwives’ counseling competencies in Indonesia

The first Info Bidan Message broadcasted to the midwives which explains about the risks of not doing birth spacing. Lombok, 18 July 2012.

Jakarta, September 2013 - Midwives are at the forefront of health care in Indonesia and they play a critical role in communicating key messages on safe pregnancy, delivery and child health to pregnant women and their families. Many midwives however, especially in rural and remote areas, are inadequately trained and lack the necessary knowledge and expertise to provide quality counseling.

Through an SMS-based pilot project called Info Bidan (Information for Midwives) UNICEF engaged in innovative ways of strengthening the capacities of midwives in rural areas. The results have been positive and UNICEF is now in discussion with the Ministry of Health and other partners on how best to introduce the model as a training tool for all 100,000 midwives in Indonesia.