On March 10, 2021, the Micronutrient Forum announced the Healthy Mothers Healthy Babies Consortium (HMHB) launch. The Healthy Mothers Healthy Babies Consortium (HMHB) is working to ensure that women everywhere have access to vital nutrition services and antenatal care that protect their health during pregnancy and lactation and provide a healthy start in life for their babies.
We can provide an inclusive, collaborative, and comprehensive platform with other stakeholders to shape and drive a shared plan for introducing, implementing, and scaling multiple micronutrient supplementation (MMS) through this consortium.SUMMIT Institute for Development (SID) is one of the consortium partners organized by the Micronutrient Forum. This event is expected to be a forum for maternal and child health expertise to improve access to better maternal nutrition services.
Yuni Dwi Setiawati (Senior Research Officer) was invited to represent SID Indonesia as a speaker. She had the opportunity to participate in a panel discussion with Lenore Spies (Consultant and formerly with KZN South Africa) on in-country implementation and the importance of collaboration.
In this consortium, Yuni talked about the implementation of MMS in Indonesia and the success of the summit trial conducted by SID. SUMMIT Trial is a large-scale randomized controlled trial-based research conducted in 2001-2004 in Lombok Island, West Nusa Tenggara Province. This study involved nearly 42 000 pregnant women. This research shows that giving micronutrient supplements (multiple micronutrient supplements) to pregnant women will reduce the risk of infant mortality by almost 20% compared to only giving supplements containing folic acid and iron.
The existence of a participatory approach supports the success of this MMS implementation by involving pregnant women in choosing the preferred MMS tablet according to their preferences, starting from determining the preferred color, shape, and package of MMS tablets so that pregnant women are more diligent in consuming MMS tablets regularly.
This consortium is expected to be a momentum to increase access to good maternal nutrition services and accelerate the availability and effectiveness of MMS implementation to facilitate access to adequate nutrition to maintain their health and prevent more infant deaths due to malnutrition.
This action can also be supported by utilizing a digital health system to support leading health workers in Indonesia, especially midwives. The digital health platform, known as OpenSRP, stands for “Open Smart Register Platform Register, intended to assist health workers in monitoring the condition of pregnant women during pregnancy to avoid complications and other unwanted outcomes. Through this application, midwives can monitor MMS consumption. Apart from reducing manual workloads, midwives also easily collect accurate data in real-time to reduce maternal and child mortality and ensure that everyone remains healthy with accurate data through the help of sophisticated technology.
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