Issues of infant and child development are an important thing to note by mothers, cadres of community health centre, as well as health professionals. It is because babies are prone to various problems that can afflict fatal impact on their safety and growth. Therefore, the cadres and health professionals are expected to master the things about babies, the danger signs of infant illness and monitor the Towards Healthy Cards (KMS) to know if there are dangers threatening or to detect early development of the child.
To enhance the knowledge and skills of cadres and health workers, UGM Academic Hospital (RSA) organizes community service activities in health sector in the form of training about a newborn handling, infant massage and chest physiotherapy in children. Community Service Activities committee chairman of RSA, dr. Febrina Lestari, M.Sc., Sp.A, said as many as 36 cadres and health workers from 12 sub-vilagges of Trihanggo village, Sleman, joined the training. "Each of these sub-villages sends 3 representatives of health cadres and four personnel of community health centers," said Ade to the reporters on the sidelines of the training on Thursday (27/10).
He added the training is aimed at improving public education about the understanding, knowledge on the handling of a newborn, skill in performing massage on baby and chest physiotherapy for children. "Hopefully, after this training cadres will be capable of knowing the danger signs of infant illness, so they can detect early development of the child," he said.
In addition, this community service is an effort to support government programs to reduce maternal mortality and child in accordance with the objective indicators of Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) achievement. According to Ade, to achieve the MDGs is not only dependent on the government, but also community groups to continue to increase their knowledge so that the MDGs would be achieved in shorter time. "Moreover, the mortality of newborns reached 40 percent," he added.
The role of health cadres considered to be very important to control the health of babies since the pregnancy period until after the birth. However, infant care techniques that continue to experience development from time-to time is not fully known by the health cadres, so according to Ade, this kind of training will continue to be encouraged.