Halting the COVID19 impact to mother and infants in two Indonesia districts

Indonesia is one of the world's fastest-growing COVID-19 caseloads since March 2020. The daily case increased sharply in Nov-Dec 2020 and during the second wave at-mid 2021 reach 600 cases daily that made hospitals across the country reached their surge capacity. COVID-19 claimed lives of mothers and infants in two Indonesia’s districts, Grobogan and Banyumas in Central Java region where we have been implementing the Saving Lives At Births since early 2019. The maternal deaths were increased at the first 9 months of 2021 after the declining trend from 46 in 2019 to 42 in 2020. The infant deaths also declined from 677 in 2019 to 480 in 2020. Total 444 mothers and 18 infants were confirmed as positive in the first 9 months in 2021, and 56 mothers and 3 infants died due to COVID19. Besides that, 128 mothers and 491 infants died because they could not access the emergency care because all hospitals and primary health centers were fully occupied by COVID19 cases. Due to that, we modified the program interventions to include distribution of PPEs for protecting mothers and healthcare workers, training frontline workers on Infection Prevention and Control, testing COVID19 to mother at 35 and 37 weeks of gestation ages and isolate and treat them when confirmed as positive, and urging the Indonesia government to speed up vaccination to pregnant women. Program assessment in March 2022 showed that these interventions have been decelerating the COVID19 impact to mothers and infants.