The Presidential Staff Office (KSP) is targeting to bring down the childhood stunting rate to 14 percent across the nation, including in border areas, by 2024, deputy II of the office, Abetnego Tarigan, informed on Tuesday.
“Nationally, by 2024, we are targeting stunting reduction to 14 percent. Right now, we are still below 30 percent, therefore this will be a joint homework, especially for border areas,” he said during a working visit to Pontianak, West Kalimantan, the same day.
In the handling of stunting cases, the border areas in West Kalimantan would be the main focus of the government, he added.
“This border area is important to focus on because it relates to access to food that is difficult to enter in the region, including parenting as well and so on. Later, we will also share this matter at a national seminar,” Tarigan said.
Stunting, which affects children under the age of five, leads to failure in proper growth due to chronic malnutrition in the first thousand days of life. Thus, affected children tend to be shorter than other kids of their age. The Indonesian Toddler Nutrition Status Survey in 2021 pegged stunting prevalence at 24.4 percent, or around 5.33 million toddlers.
In addition to stunting, Tarigan also spoke about the distribution of health resources, especially doctors, in border areas. Besides the building of health facilities, the distribution of health human resources must also be equal.
“The number of health human resources would affect the (health) management in the border areas, meaning that a bigger investment is needed to build this area,” he said.
Moreover, one of the disadvantages faced by residents in border areas is access and service related to the educational sector, he noted.
“We can build facilities, but with the community living in rural areas with challenging access, it will reduce the school participation rate. The biggest factor is accessibility and roads. That is one thing that we need to talk about. We hope Tanjungpura University in Pontianak can provide inputs related to this issue,” he added.
Source: Antara News