Govt takes action as malnutrition rises

The government may have claimed that the country’s economic growth has lifted millions out of poverty, but a family tragedy in Bandung, West Java, is a reminder that Indonesia still has a long way to go before it can escape the spectre of suffering a lost generation due to malnutrition.

Unable to cope with poverty, a mother from an impoverished family left her 3-month-old malnourished baby, Renaldi, in the care of her grandparents, Otih, 67, and Oyoh, 52, an elderly couple who live in a shanty home in Maleber subdistrict, Bandung, West Java.

Renaldi was born on Oct. 5, 2011, at Hasan Sadikin Hospital in Bandung, weighing 4.5 kilograms, but after three months his weight dropped to 4.2 kilograms, 1.8 kilograms less than the normal weight of a 3-month old baby.

“The baby is sick. His stomach is bloated and he keeps on crying. But I don’t have any money to take him to a Puskesmas [community health center],” Oyoh said when The Jakarta Post visited her 3-by-7-square-meter shanty.

“We only feed him with Rp 1,500 [16 US cents] sachets of milk that we buy at a small stall or starch water [that we take from cooked rice] with brown sugar.”

Reynaldi is not the first child to suffer malnutrition and to have been left with relatives or abandoned.

Four-year-old Keiza Yulianti, who was left by her mother in a slum area behind Jl. Braga, Bandung, only weighed 6.6 kilograms, while a fully nourished female child of her age should weigh 15 kilograms. Keiza’s mother also came from an impoverished family.

The West Java Health Agency recorded that there were 7,377 malnourished children as of March, 2011, in the West Java cities of Bandung, Sukabumi, Cianjur, Garut, Sumedang, Karawang, Majalengka, Kuningan and Cirebon, while 252,255 other children under 5 years of age living in those areas were undernourished.

The two malnourished babies are new additions to the many children who suffer from malnutrition in the country.

Data from the Basic Health Research program (Riskesdas) conducted by the Health Ministry in 2010 shows that in spite of impressive economic growth, the percentage of children in the country experiencing stunted growth reached a staggering 35.6 percent of children below the age of 5, a total of 26.7 million children.

According to the National Development Planning Agency (Bappenas), Indonesia’s poverty rate dropped by 5.26 percent over the 2006-2011 period.

To deal with the rampant malnutrition, the Health Ministry has launched a program called “First 1,000 Days for the Country” in six of the country’s provinces: East Java, East Nusa Tenggara (NTT), Gorontalo, West Nusa Tenggara (NTB) and West Sulawesi.

The program will focus on providing nutritious intake for children during their first 1,000 days of life.