Indonesia has participated in and endorsed International Conferences and Reservations on the International Conference on Population & Development (ICPD) Programme of Action (PoA). These are: ICPD (1994), Beijing Platform for Action (1995) and Millennium Development Goals (MDG) (2000).^[1] As far as legally-binding international documents are concerned, Indonesia has placed reservations on article 29 (1) of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) and ratified in 1984 through Law Number 7/1984.^[2]

Indonesia’s MMR in 2005 continues to be high – 420 -  in South-East Asia and in Asia as a whole. Complications from unsafe abortions cause 15% of maternal deaths, and from this 15%, “750,000 to one million abortions each year in Indonesia, 89% were among married women and 11% were among single women. It is estimated that 70% of women who have had an abortion were trying to abort using traditional herbs (jamu), traditional massage, or an object, or sought an abortion from a traditional healer (dukun) before coming to the clinic. This is a cause for concern because these attempts can be life threatening and dangerous for women’s health.”^[3]  

The maternal mortality ratio reflects women’s access to functional referral systems and quality care at all levels of the health system and some of the major contributions of this increasing maternal mortality rate (in West Java according to a study) are bleeding, infection and eclampsia and unhygienic conditions at delivery that contribute to postpartum infection. But more than these medical factors, Javanese culture promotes various postpartum practices that are supposed to be beneficial to mothers but in reality are extremely dangerous. Inserting herbs into the vagina ante - or post partum; the traditional healer inserting the hand into the vagina during birth and into the uterus after birth to extract the placenta; and the mother sitting for hours after birth with her back to a pole and her legs stretched out in front, with weights on either side of the feet to prevent movement are some of these dangerous practices. Difficult births were often seen as progressing too slowly while, paradoxically, the symptoms were too fast to manage. Traditional healers generally see time as a potentially healing rather than a potentially threatening factor in case management.^[4]

Basic health interventions are not reaching the poor. The proportion of pregnant women who delivered with a trained attendant is 21% among the poorest women and 89% among the wealthiest.^[5]