Calculated Number of Midwives Required in Indonesian Public Health Centers based on Minimum Standard Workforce

Midwives are part of a strategic workforce aimed at reducing Indonesia's maternal mortality rate; however, the Indonesian government's task to assign midwives to public health centers (PHCs) is not straightforward. This quantitative descriptive study, aims to describe the availability, distribution, requirement, and lack or excess of midwives in Indonesian PHCs based on the minimum standard workforce. The study used secondary data from The Board of Development and Empowerment of Human Resources for Health, which was tabulated and compared to a minimum standard workforce for PHCs by univariate analysis. The analysis showed that for 9,740 registered PHCs, there were 79,314 midwives, while the calculated minimum required number of midwives based on the minimum standard workforce was 49,145. Six percent of PHCs had numbers of midwives that met the minimum standard workforce. Forty-one per cent of PHCs had less midwives than the minimum standard workforce, lacking 13,296. The largest deficiency was in Papua's PHCs that lacked 1,445 midwives. In comparison, Fifty-three percent of PHCs had more midwives than the minimum standard workforce, with an excess of 43,465. The largest excess was in East Java's PHCs, totaling of 5,852. Even though the number of PHC midwives was greater than the calculated standard number required, there was a mal-distribution of midwives with several PHCs having an excess of midwives and several PHCs with not enough midwives.