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In 1995 the Galton Institute made a grant of £70,000, payable over three years, to Marie Stopes International for a practical birth control scheme in Indonesia (See Newsletter, Issue 18, p.1.). The following is the report recently received from MSI detailing the results of the first year’s progress of the scheme conducted by MSI in collaboration with its local partner YMSI.
MSI operates three clinics in the country; Tangerang, Bogor and Bandung. All three of these clinics are now operational and providing a full range of reproductive health care services to the indigenous population. In addition, a mobile clinic visits various sites around the country. This enables YMSI to maximise the number of people who can benefit from our services. All clinics provide services to the entire community, regardless of income, however the mobile clinic purposefully visits the deprived rural and urban districts. This ensures that even the poorest of people can afford high quality family planning services and have the number of children they desire.
In addition to providing a full range of reproductive health care services the clinics conduct a significant number of training and educational initiatives working with a variety of community groups. Through these activities and the very innovative mobile programmes the YMSI team has developed an excellent reputation in West Java for committed high quality, client centred reproductive health care. YMSI became the only NGO on Java providing voluntary surgical contraception services both at the clinics and at mobile sites in more remote peri-urban and rural areas, gaining great acclaim from the Government’s family planning department.
The services offered by YMSI include family planning counselling, vasectomy, IUCDs, injectable contraception, Norplant, condoms and oral pills. The YMSI team also performs female and male sterilisation in Government health facilities - it is hoped that eventually this procedure will be performed in their own clinics, but this is presently prevented by official regulations. Once every month all services are provided free - with the government paying the bills- this is called the Posuandu or "Safari Campaign Day". The disadvantaged and poor of the surrounding districts make good use of this highly effective government financed, YMSI operated initiative.
YMSI plays a strong part in the education, particularly in family planning education, of women and their families in the districts visited by the mobile clinics. In general there is a strong preference for materials which are pictorial in nature, however literacy classes are offered to the participants. This service relies heavily on providing informative, inviting leaflets on issues such as vasectomy, tubal ligation, family planning methods, as well as a variety of demonstration models for their usage. Some of the participants in these programmes have since become ‘advocates’ for family planning and YMSI in their local communities, thus spreading the word of responsible family planning throughout entire neighbourhoods.
Overall the clinics have enabled 10,000 clients to take control over their fertility in a manner that suits their own needs. This has brought 29,958 years of protection for two people - or put another way prevented a maximum of 39,944 unwanted births. This is partially due to the provision of nearly 2,300 vasectomies and sterilisations.
Without the support and funding from the Galton Institute, MSI and YMSI would have found it impossible to cater for such a large number of people who desperately required our services. On behalf of those people, MSI and YMSI would like to thank the Institute and all of its members.