Deliver Maternal Health Care in Lombok

Our Lombok Clinic is celebrating six months in their new facility this month.

Since January, the clinic has brought 26 babies gently into the world and our patient numbers are climbing each month. January saw 189 instances of patient care, while September had 727, an almost four-fold increase.

This reinforces Bumi Sehat's experience that "If you build it, they will come" and shows there is strong need in the area for our services. Every service has seen similar types of increases in monthly numbers, from vitamin distribution (64 → 500) to prenatal check-ups (5 → 37) to family planning delivery (2 → 19), with overall instances of patient care rising from 295 → 1314.

One exception is that home health care visits have decreased as more patients find their way to Bumi Sehat and feel confident in the new facility. We've had to build trust in the face of many people's fear of being inside larger buildings after the devastating Lombok earthquakes. Knowing that our Lombok clinic was built to best practices standards for buildings in a quake zone has inspired our local community and our patients to feel safe.

The local community continues to face ongoing financial, mental and physical stress in the wake of the pandemic and the stopping of tourism. However, one bright spot in their lives is that they can receive free healthcare and birth services at Bumi Sehat and this removes financial stress around healthcare and birth for them.

We are optimistic to see that domestic tourism has surged in recent months and we hope this trend continues and that Lombok can begin to recover economically as tourism returns.

Our Lombok clinic is open now and fully operational. Our Director, Ibu Budi, has hired a staff of six midwives to make sure that midwifery and nursing care is available around the clock. Each shift must have at least two midwives on duty and at least one senior midwife must be on duty at all times. In Indonesia, a midwife is also a trained and registered nurse.

Lombok continues to experience small quakes and this means that the local community, already dealing with PTSD and having lost homes and businesses they can't afford to rebuild, continue to face ongoing financial, mental and physical stress. However, one bright spot in their lives is that they can receive free healthcare and birth services at Bumi Sehat and this removes the financial stress from pregnancy and birth for them.