Global Health Progress

Ruth Madison, MPH, works as a technical advisor of the Health of Women and Children unit at Project HOPE, an international health education and humanitarian assistance organization. Ruth is the technical backstop for several Project HOPE child survival programs in Africa, Asia and Latin America.

A Project HOPE staff member interviews a mother about her ability to seek health care for herself and her child in the Aceh Barat district of Indonesia, a region still struggling to recover from the 2004 catastrophic tsunami.
Courtesy Project HOPE

Ruth Madison
Courtesy Project HOPE

Press Release: Lifesaving Work in Indonesia Expands

Although the images of December 26, 2004, have long since faded from our newspapers and television sets, the people devastated by the Indian Ocean Tsunami still continue to work to rebuild and restore their lives. The Tsunami killed thousands of men, women and children, injured thousands more, and left Indonesia’s medical infrastructure in chaos.

While health indicators point to improved medical infrastructure in areas such as the Nagan Raya District, where HOPE  — with the support of the U.K.’s Big Lottery Fund (BIG) and partners — helped re-establish health posts, other districts in the country are still struggling. In the Aceh Barat District, there has been little help in rebuilding the medical infrastructure, and immunization rates and levels of birth and post partum care are below the national average. The low immunization rates result in far more frequent life-threatening, yet preventable, childhood illnesses.

With the new grant of nearly $1 million received from the U.K.’s BIG, Project HOPE can begin a three-year project to enhance maternal and child health in the Aceh Barat District. The new funding from BIG will allow Project HOPE to improve the lives of 15,000 women and children by focusing on improving childhood nutrition, increasing the rate of immunization, ensuring women deliver with assistance from a skilled birth attendant, increasing the lifesaving practice of exclusive breastfeeding, and helping to establish village health committees to deliver important health messages and health information at the local level.

Indonesia has a special place in Project HOPE’s history. On the maiden voyage of the SS HOPE, volunteers docked in Indonesia in 1960, providing humanitarian assistance and health education to those in desperate need. So when the call for help came following the Indian Ocean Tsunami, one of the worst natural disasters in modern history, Project HOPE was one of the humanitarian organizations that responded, delivering millions of dollars worth of humanitarian aid, and sending hundreds of medical volunteers to the region in partnership with the U.S. Navy aboard the USNS Mercy. Project HOPE continued its tsunami relief efforts in the Nagan Raya District of Indonesia, reestablishing and improving health posts severely damaged or destroyed by the tsunami. From 2005 to 2008, Project HOPE’s work in Nagan Raya has helped improve health care for 3,332 infants, 13,866 children, 4,122 pregnant women, and 16,146 women of reproductive age.

This new program, in Aceh Barat, will help women and children receive the health care they need, and continue to help Indonesia on its path to recovery.

For more information about this program, visit www.projecthope.org