 Maria Dse, 3, peers upside down from inside a sack, used to weigh her on a scale. She was previously classed as underweight, but now her weight is far better according to village health experts. (THANE BURNETT/SUN MEDIA)
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TIMOR, Indonesia – On the day that Maria Dse was born, they didn’t summon a shaman to sacrifice a chicken.
Traditionally, that is what mother’s have done here for eons, hoping the enchanted blood spilled during the ceremony would appease the spirits.
Instead, as a progressive woman in her community, Maria’s mom Ermalinda Banu called for a trained midwife to help with the delivery.
The shaman was out. Modern medicine — or at least a push for better health for the next generation born on rocky hills overlooking fields and palm forests — is now in.
Her small village of Batnes — in fact the entire district it rests in — is the gold standard Indonesia’s provincial politicians use when talking about meeting Millennium Development Goals.
“I want her healthy,” says Maria’s mom, Ermalinda, as she waits to get Maria weighed at a local integrated health clinic, called a posyandu.
In a rustic village where little boys hunt birds and coconuts with homemade slingshots and gas is sold in glass bottles Maria is a benchmark of progress.
An hours drive from her village, Gabriel Manek, the proud head of the municipal district, sits in a meeting room and explains that by introducing better education programs, 456 health clinics and improved farming practices, they have all but eliminated childhood malnutrition. In 2005, almost four in ten local children below five years old were deprived of needed nutrients and body fat. Today, he claims only .2% of children in his municipality are undernourished.
While many communities like Batnes have made great gains, one of the grey areas of meeting strict global goals by a 2015 deadline becomes calculating the actual progress.
The dramatic decline in this region is — in part — because they now simply measure the children differently than before.
So while Maria represents progress, it’s often difficult to know how healthy the numbers really are.
