HOPE-Attained Skills Help Midwife in Indonesia

Indonesia’s rates of maternal and newborn deaths are alarmingly high – among the highest in Asia. More than 17,000 women die every year due to pregnancy-related causes, and there are more than 90,000 deaths of newborns in Indonesia. Project HOPE has been implementing the Saving Lives at Birth project in Serang, a part of Banten Province, Indonesia, since 2012 with excellent results. For example, exclusive breastfeeding from 0-6 months among mothers in this province increased from 28 percent to 58 percent since the start of the project. Due to this success and other successes, Saving Lives at Birth has been renewed for three more years and is expanding to reach more women and children in need. Here is just one example of how this program is saving so many lives.

My name is Mrs. Lina, and I’m a midwife in Mancak, Indonesia. I often have had patients with umbilical cord complications, but I was afraid to handle them myself and always referred them to the health center or hospital. Even though I studied it when I was a student during midwife school classes, I never was given practice. So, I wasn’t confident to handle it on my own.

On June 15, 2015, I was able to help a patient who a Community Health volunteer brought to me. The patient was nauseous and her labor had started normally. I helped her deliver her baby, but the placenta didn’t come out within the normal time. Because I had been trained by Project HOPE, I had the skills and confidence to perform a manual placenta removal successfully. I would like to continue to have more training from Project HOPE.

The Saving Lives at Birth project is funded by Johnson & Johnson.