Integrated Healthcare Center is Key to Handle Stunting at Community Level, Says Minister

TEMPO.CO, Jakarta - Coordinating Minister for Human Development and Culture, Muhadjir Effendy, stated that integrated healthcare center (posyandu) played an important role in handling stunting in the community.

"Posyandu is able to conduct early detection regarding child growth and development and monitor children's health conditions," Effendy noted in his written statement received on Wednesday.

To this end, the minister urged local governments to strengthen the role of posyandu to support the government's program in accelerating stunting prevalence reduction.

"The local government can establish additional posyandu and optimize training for cadres in the village, especially regarding accurate measurements of the baby's height and weight," he stated.

He said that training for health cadres, starting from village midwives, Family Welfare Development (PKK) activists, and other health workers, was increasingly important to improve the quality of health services, especially at the posyandu level.

Effendy remarked that the government, through the Ministry of Health, had begun distributing standardized weighing and anthropometric tools to all posyandu across the country.

The effort aims to standardize measurement methods for each child in the region, including the same reporting method, he remarked.

"After all of these anthropometric tools have been distributed, the coverage of weighing and measuring in the area is expected to reach 90-percent data accuracy," he stated.

Meanwhile, the current stunting prevalence in Indonesia, based on the Indonesian Nutrition Status Survey (SSGI), is 21.6 percent. The government is targeting the prevalence of stunting to drop to 14 percent by 2024.

In addition, field epidemiologist from Jenderal Soedirman University in Purwokerto, Dr Yudhi Wibowo, believes that posyandu could become one of the front guards in the program to accelerate stunting reduction in Indonesia.

"Besides being able to aid in the early detection of stunting, posyandu can help to intensify dissemination of information regarding efforts to prevent stunting for parents through healthy lifestyles and family consumption patterns since posyandu is the closest health service to the community at the village level," Wibowo remarked.

ANTARA

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