Project Concern's Indonesia program improves health care for 635,000 children and mothers in 345 remote villages. Project Concern International has worked in Indonesia since 1971 to bring basic but essential health care to vast areas of this island nation. With a population of 216 million, Indonesia is the fourth largest country in the world. Indonesia is comprised of more than 13,000 islands and populated by more than 300 ethnic groups in a vast archipelago stretching 3,000 miles from east to west. Indonesia currently faces a wide variety of health care challenges.
Many areas are isolated and inaccessible because of rough seas and unsafe transportation.
Indonesian children often suffer from respiratory infections, skin and eye diseases, intestinal parasites, malaria, tuberculosis and gastroenteritis. More than 50 percent of all Indonesian deaths are children under five years old. More than 80 percent of infant deaths are caused by curable illness such as tetanus, diarrhea and respiratory infections. As in its Southeast Asian neighbors, AIDS is a growing concern. Conditions exist for a major explosion of HIV infection over the next several years.