Outcomes by birth setting and caregiver for low risk women in Indonesia: a systematic literature review.

BACKGROUND: Care for women during pregnancy, labour, birth and the postpartum period is essential to reducing maternal and neonatal mortality and morbidity, however the ideal place and organisation of care provision has not been established. The World Health Organization recommends a two-tier maternity care system involving first-level care in community facilities, with backup obstetric hospital care. However, evidence from high-income countries is increasingly showing benefits for low risk women birthing outside of hospital with skilled birth assistance and access to backup care, including lower rates of intervention. Indonesia is a lower middle-income country with a network of village based midwives who attend births at homes, clinics and hospitals, and has reduced mortality rates in recent decades while maintaining largely low rates of intervention. However, the country has not met its neonatal or maternal mortality reduction goals, and it is unclear whether greater improvements could be made if all women birthed in hospital. BODY: This paper reviewed the literature on birth outcomes by place of birth and/or caregiver for women considering their risk of complications in Indonesia. A systematic literature search of Pubmed, CINAHL, CENTRAL, Web of Science, Popline, WHOLIS and clinical trials registers in 2016 and updated in 2018 resulted in screening 2211 studies after removing duplicates. Twenty four studies were found to present outcomes by place of birth or caregiver and were included. The studies were varied in their findings with respect of the outcomes for women birthing at home and in hospital, with and without skilled care. The quality of most studies was rated as poor or moderate using the Effective Public Health Practice Project Quality Assessment Tool. Only one study gave an overall assessment of the risk status of the women included, making it impossible to draw conclusions about outcomes for low risk women specifically; other studies adjusted for various individual risk factors. CONCLUSION: From the studies in this review, it is impossible to assess the outcomes for low risk women birthing with health professionals within and outside of Indonesian hospitals. This finding is supported by reviews from other countries with developing maternity systems. Better evidence and information is needed before determinations can be made about whether attended birth outside of hospitals is a safe option for low risk women outside of high income countries.

A cross cultural study of vaginal practices and sexuality: implications for sexual health.

Between 2005 and 2006, we investigated vaginal practices in Yogyakarta, Indonesia; Tete, Mozambique; KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa; and Bangkok and Chonburi, Thailand. We sought to understand women's practices, their motivations for use and the role vaginal practices play in women's health, sexuality and sense of wellbeing. The study was carried out among adult women and men who were identified as using, having knowledge or being involved in trade in products. Further contacts were made using snowball sampling. Across the sites, individual interviews were conducted with 229 people and 265 others participated in focus group discussions. We found that women in all four countries have a variety of reasons for carrying out vaginal practices whose aim is to not simply 'dry' the vagina but rather decrease moisture that may have other associated meanings, and that they are exclusively "intravaginal" in operation. Practices, products and frequency vary. Motivations generally relate to personal hygiene, genital health or sexuality. Hygiene practices involve external washing and intravaginal cleansing or douching and ingestion of substances. Health practices include intravaginal cleansing, traditional cutting, insertion of herbal preparations, and application of substances to soothe irritated vaginal tissue. Practices related to sexuality can involve any of these practices with specific products that warm, dry, and/or tighten the vagina to increase pleasure for the man and sometimes for the woman. Hygiene and health are expressions of femininity connected to sexuality even if not always explicitly expressed as such. We found their effects may have unexpected and even undesired consequences. This study demonstrates that women in the four countries actively use a variety of practices to achieve a desired vaginal state. The results provide the basis for a classification framework that can be used for future study of this complex topic.

The way forward.

Good public-health decisionmaking is dependent on reliable and timely statistics on births and deaths (including the medical causes of death). All high-income countries, without exception, have national civil registration systems that record these events and generate regular, frequent, and timely vital statistics. By contrast, these statistics are not available in many low-income and lower-middle-income countries, even though it is in such settings that premature mortality is most severe and the need for robust evidence to back decisionmaking most critical. Civil registration also has a range of benefits for individuals in terms of legal status, and the protection of economic, social, and human rights. However, over the past 30 years, the global health and development community has failed to provide the needed technical and financial support to countries to develop civil registration systems. There is no single blueprint for establishing and maintaining such systems and ensuring the availability of sound vital statistics. Each country faces a different set of challenges, and strategies must be tailored accordingly. There are steps that can be taken, however, and we propose an approach that couples the application of methods to generate better vital statistics in the short term with capacity-building for comprehensive civil registration systems in the long run.

Unintended pregnancy and women's psychological well-being in Indonesia.

Few studies have examined the impact of unintended pregnancy on women in developing countries. This paper examines the impact of unintended pregnancy on Indonesian women's psychological well-being. It is hypothesized that experiencing unintended pregnancy is associated with lower psychological well-being and that use of family planning and small family size are associated with higher levels of psychological well-being. Data are drawn from a 1996 survey of 796 women aged 15-49 from two Indonesian provinces, Lampung and South Sumatra. This article focuses on the 71% of women (n=562) who answered all 41 survey items related to psychological well-being. In cluster analysis, women grouped into three clusters, differentiated by their scores on four scales of well-being established through factor analysis (general negative feelings, satisfaction with relationships, satisfaction with economic/family/personal conditions, and negative feelings regarding domestic issues). Women in cluster 3 were characterized mainly by their high level of psychological well-being. Women in cluster 1 had the lowest level of well-being, and women in cluster 2 were in the middle. Multinomial logistic regression was used to assess jointly the effect of unintended pregnancy, contraceptive use, number of children and other factors on a woman's level of psychological well-being. Unintended pregnancy was associated with lower levels of psychological well-being and contraceptive use was associated with higher levels of psychological well-being, while number of children was not associated with level of well-being. Women who had experienced an unintended pregnancy were less likely to be in the high psychosocial well-being cluster versus both the medium and low clusters. In addition, women using contraception were more likely to be classified in the high than in the low or medium well-being clusters.

"Peer" educator initiatives for adolescent reproductive health projects in Indonesia.

Since the ICPD in 1994, the Government of Indonesia has struggled with the challenge of providing sexual and reproductive health education to adolescents. Following an attempt at a family-centred approach, a pilot project was carried out in Central and East Java to train peer educators, coordinated by the National Family Planning Coordinating Board (BKKBN). A total of 80 peer educators (male/female teams) carried out small-group information sessions in ten different districts. Over 1,300 adolescents attended in all. Forty peer counsellors in 20 teams then carried out five outreach sessions each in their communities, attended by nearly 4,000 adults and adolescents. Educators chosen were older in age, knowledge level, authority and communication skills than adolescents, but were well accepted as mentors. Adolescents wanted to know how to deal with sexual relationships and feelings, unwanted pregnancy and STDs. With 42 million Indonesian adolescents needing information, the government cannot produce enough manuals to satisfy demand. New strategies are required to put information in the public domain, e.g. via the media. The approach described in this paper would probably be beyond the staffing and resource capacity of most districts in Indonesia. Nonetheless, it shows that there was great enthusiasm across a variety of communities for efforts to educate young people on protecting their reproductive health.