Indonesia's infant mortality rate has declined, but health services must be improved, official says

UNICEF representative for Indonesia Angela Kearney said at a workshop on household to hospital continuum care on Thursday that although Indonesia's infant mortality rate showed a downward trend in the past few years, it is still high, Xinhua reports. "Based on a UNICEF global child mortality report, over the past 10 years infant mortality rate declined significantly to 35 out of every 1,000 births in 2011 from 97 out of every 1,000 births in 1991, she said," according to the news service.

Kearney said "Mothers' poor access to health facilities in the country posed one of the obstacles to the promotion of the nation's health" and "that a lack of infrastructures and equipment and the low number of trained medical workers had hindered the fulfillment of health services," the news service writes. "To deal with the challenge, the method of providing health services must be improved and the support of trained medical workers must be increased, she said," Xinhua notes (10/6).