The Jakarta Post, Jakarta – As National Children’s Day approaches, the Health Ministry presented bleak findings on the state of the country’s children, citing an ongoing survey that shows more than 11 percent of those under six had symptoms of underdevelopment.
The survey said underdevelopment covered physical, emotional and intellectual aspects, with some children suffering from all three.
Budihardja, the Health Ministry’s director general for public health, said the country’s children had the right to live, grow and develop into healthy, intelligent people, as stated in the 2002 Child Protection Law.
However, reaching the target of making children future leaders was “not easy”, he said Thursday during an event where 500 children aged up to 6 years old were given tests on stimulation, detection and early intervention for their growth and development (SDIDTK).
As of Thursday morning, the SDIDTK had been carried out over more than two days on 397 children. More than 11 percent of them displayed symptoms of underdevelopment.
Eleven out of the 397 children showed symptoms of global delayed development, meaning their physical, emotional and intellectual growth were poor, while 10 children displayed symptoms of malnutrition and six were microcephalic — a condition in which the circumference of the head is smaller than normal.
During the SDIDTK, parents from various economic backgrounds were asked a series of questions, and children over 2 years old were also given questions as well as asked to play with a ball or cups and blocks.
Budihardja said some of the children that day were unable to do tasks such as buttoning up their shirts, although they were at an age where they should have mastered such skills. “This means that they were not taught [that skill] at home,” he said.
Parents, or those substituting for parents in their tasks of educating children, play a large role in ensure children are given proper stimulation and care growing up, Budiharja said.
“Some Indonesian parents are too protective, the children are forbidden to do anything,” he said.
Budihardja added that some parents failed at times to give their children a chance to speak, or to listen and respond to what their children had to say.
Fatni Sulani, the ministry’s director of child health, said the community should return to using the services of integrated health clinics, which function to monitor children’s development. “SDIDTK monitoring should be done three or four times a year for infants and for children under five at least twice a year,” she said.
Fatni said parents could monitor their children’s progress by using the Mother and Child Health book, which would enable them to see whether their children were able to perform tasks expected of their age, such as sitting up, speaking or walking.
“Some children are unable to speak despite their age, but it’s because they lack stimuli,” she said.
Fatni said Indonesia aimed to meet the Millenium Development Goals of reducing infant mortality and the number of malnourished children.
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