In 2025 the Indonesian Ministry of Health (MoH), World Health Organization (WHO) and key partners are intensifying efforts to strengthen reproductive, maternal, newborn, child and adolescent health (RMNCAH) services by improving overall health programme planning and management.
Ensuring access for all women, girls and adolescents to quality RMNCAH and other health services is critical to achieving universal health coverage and implementing Indonesia’s Health Transformation Agenda. This ambitious Agenda will be guided by the Mid-term National Development Plan (RPJMN), set to be implemented from 2025 to 2029.
Despite improvements in some areas of RMNCAH, several indicators have remained stagnant. Maternal mortality remains high at 189 per 100 000 live births. The adolescent birth rate is 26.6 per 1000 in girls aged 15 to 19 years. Unmet needs for family planning persist at 18%. This is due primarily to inconsistent programme implementation at district and province levels, and misaligned regulations and quality standards.
To address these challenges, MoH, with WHO support, has conducted training in RMNCAH programme planning and management for a range of key national and provincial health officials, with a focus on rapidly improving the planning capacity of programme managers to implement the RPJMN.
For Sita Febrianti, Head of the Family Health and Nutrition Technical Unit, West Java Provincial Health Office, the training was transformative. “The goals and objectives in our current Strategic Plan are overly broad and generic,” she said. “During this course, I learned that goals and objectives must be specified and focused so that when key interventions and outputs are identified, they contribute to the strategic planning's goals, targets and objectives.”
Dr. Laila Mahmudah, former Head of Maternal and Neonatal Technical Unit, Directorate of Maternal and Child Health and Nutrition, MoH, said it marked an important step in improving the country’s health planning. “The course taught us how to think systematically. Then we re-learn how to define realistic goals, use indicators that are relevant to the current situation and choose evidence-based essential interventions,” she said.
As part of the training, WHO also supported the inclusion of RMNCAH programme managers from Timor-Leste, based on the country’s geographical proximity and similar language. “I learned a lot from module two in particular, which focuses on planning implementation,” said Lucia Marta Barreto Afonsu Lay, Head of the Maternal and Child Health Department, Directorate General of Primary Health Care, MoH, Timor-Leste.
As Indonesia moves forward with its Health Transformation Agenda, begins implementing its RPJMN, and aims to rapidly improve RMNCAH services, WHO will continue to provide crucial support across all areas of programme planning and management, for a stronger, more resilient health system that achieves the country’s health and development objectives – especially for women, girls and adolescents.