Home-based Reproduction Health Promotion for Minimizing Adolescent Maternal Mortality in Indonesia

Education about reproductive health is important for pregnant woman and also reproductive woman, including teenagers. During pregnancy, knowledge about reproductive health is important to safe the mother and the baby. For teenagers, reproductive health is important to prevent them from unwanted pregnancy. Unfortunately, health reproduction promotion among pregnant women and reproductive age (especially teenagers) is not sufficient. The lack of knowledge about reproductive health would risk woman and cause maternal mortality. This research used qualitative method. Through literature review and in-depth interview with 26 informants in Pekalongan, Central Java, Indonesia, this study examines the social marketing efforts on sexual education in Indonesia for children. Based on the previous efforts of sexuality education in Pekalongan, we argue that sexuality educations were still not enough to reduce maternal mortality because it only reached limited target, done by limited fund and limited skills of human resources at school. Therefore, promotion about health reproduction for woman has to be started from early childhood by their own parents because parents who have responsibility to give basic information about sexual matters. Even though bringing sexuality education have many challenges in Indonesia regarding its culture, but basically sexuality education activities are not contrary with some values of Indonesian people if it understood well, so that adults do not have to feel that the issue cannot be discussed with children. To improve children's' knowledge and life skill in maintaining their sexual activities properly, parents have increase their skill of communication.