With her husband left jobless by the pandemic, the last thing Indonesian mother Juarsih needed was to get pregnant, but now she’s expecting a third child — one of many in the country anxiously preparing for a COVID-fuelled baby boom.
Indonesian authorities believe there could be 400,000 more births than usual next year as lockdowns keep couples at home and cut access to contraception, prompting fears of an increase in abortions and stunting of children in poorer families. Juarsih, 41, says her birth control ran out as clinics closed or slashed hours and overwhelmed hospitals struggled to keep up with mounting coronavirus infections in the world’s fourth most populous country.
The mother of two teenagers is now too scared of the deadly respiratory disease to risk going out for a pregnancy checkup in her hometown Bandung, on Java island.
Photo: AFP
“At first I was shocked when I found out that I was pregnant,” she said.
“I started feeling happy later although there’s still some sadness... I should be grateful but this is happening at a difficult time.”
Contraception use has “dropped drastically” since the pandemic took hold across the sprawling archipelago in early March, Hasto Wardoyo, head of Indonesia’s national population and family planning board, said.
Health authorities are worried increasing numbers of expectant parents will turn to abortions and push up maternal mortality rates.
“We’re also worried about stunting — not all families can afford proper nutrition,” he said.
‘DADS, PLEASE CONTROL YOURSELF’
With access to hospitals and contraceptives difficult, health authorities have been forced to get creative.
One campaign saw health workers in government vehicles rolling through communities to announce that now wasn’t the time to have a baby.
“You can have sex,” one message blared out as workers trundled through a village.
“You can get married. But don’t get pregnant.” “Dads, please control yourself... You can have sex as long as you use contraception.”
Birth control has been a key plank of a family planning push launched by Indonesia’s late dictator Suharto half a century ago. The program was later applauded for population control measures that saw a big drop in the then-developing nation’s fertility rates.
This week authorities launched a one-day blitz that aimed to give away contraceptives to one million citizens.
Condoms are not popular in Indonesia, where some 98 percent of contraceptive users are women, mainly of hormone injections and birth-control pills.
The family planning agency also enlisted the help of celebrities with huge social media followings to get the word out to the country’s nearly 270 million people.
‘CORONA BABY’
At a health clinic in the capital Jakarta Monday, mother-of-two Rahma took advantage of the handouts, admitting that there was more romance in her household since the virus struck.
“My husband has spent a lot more time at home,” she laughed. “But since I’m using this program I’m not worried about having more babies.”
Still, infection fears are keeping many at home like Ratna Dewi Nur Amalia, who has decided to rely on charting her menstrual cycle in the hopes of avoiding pregnancy.
“I wanted to go to the gynecologist for my birth control, but then the pandemic happened,” said the 39-year-old Amalia.
“I’m too scared to go anywhere near a hospital.”
Nearly 3,000 people have died of COVID-19 in Indonesia, according to an official tally, but independent researchers say the real toll could be several times higher.
Budget cuts and a decentralized political structure across the huge country already made it tough to educate the public about family planning.
“Now health workers are too busy focusing on handling corona patients so birth-control services have been pushed aside,” said Kusmana, the head of West Java’s family planning agency, who goes by one name.
But the pandemic’s work-from-home orders were an unexpected blessing for Arie Novarina and her husband after the busy couple’s nearly two years of fruitless efforts to conceive. The 38-year-old is now pregnant with her first child.
“Maybe it was because we were healthier and not exhausted anymore, and we had lots of quality time together at home,” said Novarina, a state-owned firm employee.
“My husband and I joke that this is a corona baby.”
The primaries for this year’s nine-in-one local elections in November began early in this election cycle, starting last autumn. The local press has been full of tales of intrigue, betrayal, infighting and drama going back to the summer of 2024. This is not widely covered in the English-language press, and the nine-in-one elections are not well understood. The nine-in-one elections refer to the nine levels of local governments that go to the ballot, from the neighborhood and village borough chief level on up to the city mayor and county commissioner level. The main focus is on the 22 special municipality
The People’s Republic of China (PRC) invaded Vietnam in 1979, following a year of increasingly tense relations between the two states. Beijing viewed Vietnam’s close relations with Soviet Russia as a threat. One of the pretexts it used was the alleged mistreatment of the ethnic Chinese in Vietnam. Tension between the ethnic Chinese and governments in Vietnam had been ongoing for decades. The French used to play off the Vietnamese against the Chinese as a divide-and-rule strategy. The Saigon government in 1956 compelled all Vietnam-born Chinese to adopt Vietnamese citizenship. It also banned them from 11 trades they had previously
Hsu Pu-liao (許不了) never lived to see the premiere of his most successful film, The Clown and the Swan (小丑與天鵝, 1985). The movie, which starred Hsu, the “Taiwanese Charlie Chaplin,” outgrossed Jackie Chan’s Heart of Dragon (龍的心), earning NT$9.2 million at the local box office. Forty years after its premiere, the film has become the Taiwan Film and Audiovisual Institute’s (TFAI) 100th restoration. “It is the only one of Hsu’s films whose original negative survived,” says director Kevin Chu (朱延平), one of Taiwan’s most commercially successful
Jan. 12 to Jan. 18 At the start of an Indigenous heritage tour of Beitou District (北投) in Taipei, I was handed a sheet of paper titled Ritual Song for the Various Peoples of Tamsui (淡水各社祭祀歌). The lyrics were in Chinese with no literal meaning, accompanied by romanized pronunciation that sounded closer to Hoklo (commonly known as Taiwanese) than any Indigenous language. The translation explained that the song offered food and drink to one’s ancestors and wished for a bountiful harvest and deer hunting season. The program moved through sites related to the Ketagalan, a collective term for the
RSS