Free incubators save lives of Indonesia babies
bogor — Tiny Indonesian baby Maryamah stared around from inside an incubator, her bright eyes swivelling left and right from under a woollen hat that was far too big for her.
When she was born prematurely, Maryamah was just 1.2kg, less than half the usual weight of a newborn in Indonesia.
Now safely back at home, she is still diminutive but nestles comfortably in a small incubator lent to family, who live in a poor neighbourhood in the city of Bogor on Java island.
She is one of hundreds of premature babies born in Indonesia benefiting from the work of an engineering professor who is building incubators and lending them for free to low-income families in a bid to fill a gap in the healthcare system. “The government has a program of public health insurance, but it cannot cover all the people,” Raldi Artono Koestoer, who established the initiative, said.
Indonesia has the fifth greatest number of premature births of any nation in the world, at 675,700 a year, according to the World Health Organisation. The WHO says that pre-term birth complications are the leading cause of death among children under five.
Babies born early can need specialist care. Incubators keep them warm and can help prevent infections. But getting access to the live-saving devices is a huge challenge for the millions living in poverty in Indonesia.
The public insurance scheme — introduced in 2014 — has helped as it sometimes covers the cost of incubators for a while.
But families unable to afford the high cost of continued care are often forced to take their newborns home early.
Koestoer, who works at the University of Indonesia just outside Jakarta, started his lending scheme back in 2012, using his technical expertise to design and build ultralight, portable incubators.
His interest in incubators began when he fixed one of the devices for his elder brother, a paediatrician, and then learnt how to construct them himself. —