Statement by
DR. Agung Laksono
Coordinating Minister for People’s Welfare
The Republic of Indonesia
At the Family Planning Summit
London 11 July 2012
FAMILY PLANNING IN INDONESIA
Lesson learned from its success
Chairperson
Excellency
Delegates
Ladies and Gentlemen
Gotong royong is popular word in Indonesia. It means “the
sharing of all community’s responsibilities.” And in Indonesia, it
has been a powerful force driving our effort since the 1960s.
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Back then we realized Indonesia’s fertility rate of 5.6 births per
woman was not sustainable. We knew the strain on families and
public services would eventually cripple our country.
So from gotong royong came a successful family planning
program – built around encouraging smaller families and
increasing access to contraception. This along with female
education and economic opportunities for our people, helped
reduce the fertility rate to just 2.3 births per woman, averting 100
million births.
So how did we accomplish this? There were four key steps:
First, we used grassroots participation to reach rural areas in the
1970s. We recruited as many as 40,000 field workers and
100,000 volunteers to bring clinic services to the village level.
These personnel would visit homes to discuss family planning
methods, provide counseling, and make referrals to community
health centers.
Second,
we
launched
an
innovative,
multi-pronged
communications campaign designed to bring about changes in
social norms. It was called the “small, happy, and prosperous
family” campaign. And its goals were to make the discussion and
use of family planning acceptable, increase interest in having
fewer children, and generate demand for services.
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Third, we knew that the public sector could not handle increased
demand alone, so we focused on creating public-private
partnerships. These relationships helped train 50,000 village
midwives and led to a significant increase in demand for family
planning services. In fact, percentage of family planning clients
who received contraception from the private sector jumped from
18 percent in the 1980s to 69 percent in 2007.
Fourth, we shifted our focus in the mid-1990s to quality of
service, making our program more responsive to client needs and
empowering them to make the best choices for themselves.
Excellency Ladies and Gentlemen
5.6 to 2.3 births per woman in little over 30 years - we consider
this to be a great success. And looking back, we have realized
several factors were keys to success.
The first was political will – including funding – from our political
leaders from the president and parliamentarians, down to the
village level.
Second, Indonesia has benefited from establishing a National
Family Planning Coordinating Board that is independent from the
Ministry of Health. This allows the board to be more flexible, to
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work directly with other agencies and to report straight to the
president.
Third, the board has benefited from effective management, from
the national level to the district level. This includes the
management
of
our
expansive
decentralized
network
of
grassroots volunteers.
Fourth, we have developed data and reporting systems and built
research capacity in order to track trends in contraceptives usage,
methods, supply and other metrics.
And lastly, nothing could have been accomplished without the
collaboration of a broad spectrum of stakeholders – from
government ministries to religious organizations to health
providers. People united by gotong royong.
Delegates
In Indonesia, we are extremely proud of how family planning has
helped individuals, families and our country so far. But we
recognize that we still face challenges and we are committed to
addressing them.
We are elevating the quality of family planning services,
committing to improve 23,500 family planning clinics from 2010 to
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2014 and guarantee the quality of services offered there.
We are doing more reach remote populations by increasing
mobile family planning services.
We are committed to reducing the disparities in contraceptive
usage by providing free contraceptives to all couples in seven
provinces: Aceh, West Nusa Southeast, East Nusa Tenggara,
Papua, West Papua, Maluku, and North Maluku.
In addition,
IUDs, condoms and implants are also provided free of charge to
all couples in-need.
We are addressing financial barriers by initiating a health
insurance for poor. The current program does not provide full
coverage for those who in-need and moreover, it does not
subsidize the full cost of family planning services as charged by
health centers.
We are improving access by integrating family planning into
childbirth insurance scheme, which launched in 2011. This
program introduced free antenatal care, delivery, post natal care
as well as postpartum family planning in health center facilities.
Maintaining our momentum will require both strong funding and
some needed policy improvements. But our long-term national
health goals are not limited only to family planning. Given all that
we have accomplished so far, I firmly believe that Indonesia can
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one day achieve universal coverage, making quality health care a
reality for all of our citizens.
And as a G20 member, we also have a responsibility to share our
experience and lessons learned to our counterparts in the
developing world. Our family planning efforts have enabled us to
invest more in health care, education and infrastructure. Children
grow
up
healthier,
better
educated,
and
with
increased
opportunities. For parents, fewer children means less money
spent on food, shelter, clothing and other expenses, and has also
been tied to increased women’s participation in the workforce.
We have learned a lot and we have a lot to share.
So today, we are very pleased to announce:
 That we will include family planning within universal health
insurance program that will begin in 2014.
 That we will be increasing our investments in our
International Training Program (ITP) managed by the
National Population and Family Planning Board, so that
other countries in Asia and Africa can come to Indonesia and
learn from our experience from the ground up. This is a
major commitment of ours toward South-South cooperation.
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 Maintaining increased finances for family planning - fivefold
increase in budget since 2006
 Increase choice/method mix – especially long acting and
permanent methods – specific plans to achieve this:
Increased training for doctors and midwives on these
methods;
 Highlight upcoming global youth forum to discuss populationdevelopment and youth.
Finally, successful family planning programs mean bright futures
for children, women, families, communities, and countries.
Just as we in Indonesia work together to provide health education
and access for each new generation of our citizens, I hope that all
of us can share ideas from country to country; and draw
inspiration from each other’s accomplishments and dreams.
Remember – gotong royong.
I thank you.
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