The Birth Control Trust of the Galton Institute

In June 1995, The Galton Institute generously provided resources for Marie Stopes International’s affiliate organisation in Indonesia (YMSI) to provide a full range of reproductive and basic curative health care in Indonesia. Marie Stopes International has used the support of the Galton Institute as leverage for an additional £205,679 from the European Union. Two years later and the programme is going from strength to strength. Without funding from the Galton Institute this would not have been possible. YMSI will use the final tranche of funding to expand its range of services and outreach components to ensure that in twelve months time it is financially secure into the future.

Indonesia has the largest population in South East Asia, and the fourth largest in the world. This places great pressure on the natural resources of the country. Erosion and exhaustion of fertile lands is rampant on many of the country’s seventeen thousand islands. Java, where two-thirds of the population live, has some of the worst environmental problems in the region. The farming community faces the brunt of this - being forced to farm the steep slopes where the topsoil is very thin and loose means the rains all too often wash it away.

In the urban areas the situation is not much better, the polluted air is stifling and untreated industrial and household waste have transformed the rivers and bays into poisonous pungent cesspools.

For women and children the situation is even worse. Approximately one woman in 70 dies from pregnancy related causes - this is compared with one woman in over 17,000 in Italy. In fact, out of every 100,000 who give birth 450 will die within 42 days of giving birth.

Children, especially girls, are often disadvantaged from birth. The father all too often undervalues the role of parenting leaving the job solely to the mother. With men holding the ‘purse-strings’ families frequently suffer poor health and nutrition. Should the mother die, infant mortality for boys increases by 200 per cent and for girls 300 per cent.

The problems outlined above provide an illustration of the situation faced by the country. They are by no means exclusive - but do depict a scenario of suffering caused by over population.

This is the first report to the Galton Institute where all three clinics and the mobile clinic have all been fully operational for the entire reporting period. All three provided a full range of reproductive and primary health care services.

The mobile outreach team has also seen a continual and stark increase in the client numbers and the proportion of clients seeking family planning services. In the initial phases of implementation of a mobile unit the majority of the services are primary health care, as time passes - and more education classes and seminars have been conducted - the higher the proportion of family planning services. Now approximately 36 per cent of all the mobile units services are for some form of family planning method - this compares with only 14 per cent at this time last year. Even more exciting is that there are increasing numbers of women being referred from the mobile unit to the clinics that do not constitute part of this percentage.

In the last twelve months YMSI has significantly increased its provision of family planning services it provides in absolute terms. This has placed some additional burdens on the organisation - family planning services rarely pay for themselves. YMSI has countered this by increasing its marketing of other health care services and also family planning. In addition Nurul Fazrie, Programme Director, has implemented a number of highly successful fund-raising initiatives especially with the corporate donors and private individuals. This is something he intends to continue to ensure YMSI can provide ever-increasing numbers and proportions of family planning services.