A partnership between Yayasan Pure Earth Indonesia, Vital Strategies and the Ministry of Health to strengthen the national healthcare system to better prevent, identify, and treat lead exposure.
Strengthening Indonesia’s Health System to Protect Children from Lead Exposure
Yayasan Pure Earth Indonesia and Vital Strategies are partnering with the Ministry of Health to improve Indonesia’s health system to better identify, monitor, treat, and reduce childhood lead exposure to help children realize their full potential.
Protecting children from exposure to lead is important to lifelong good health. There is no safe blood lead level in children. Even low levels of lead in blood have been shown to affect learning, ability to pay attention, and academic achievement. To prevent further exposure and reduce damage to their child’s health. The most important step that parents and caregivers, healthcare providers, and public health professionals can take is to prevent lead exposure before it occurs.
Project Objectives
Objective One
Build capacity in Indonesia to monitor exposure of children to lead.
Objective Two
Improve environmental health data collection in selected countries by establishing a national system of monitoring exposure of children to lead.
Objective Three
Increase knowledge about sources and pathways of exposure of children to lead.
Objective Four
Strengthen the ability of healthcare professionals to early identify, treat, and prevent lead poisoning, and educate communities and children about lead poisoning and ways to avoid/mitigate risks.
Project Updates
2023
In 2023, Yayasan Pure Earth Indonesia organized the national launch of the program, solidifying collaboration with the Ministry of Health by signing a partnership – witnessed by representatives from multiple government bodies, WHO, UNICEF, and other key stakeholders. In collaboration with its strategic partner, Vital Strategies, Yayasan Pure Earth Indonesia developed questionnaires to assess national laboratory capacity and the results will be used as reference for inventory and capacity improvement to monitor lead exposure, especially in children.
Learn more in this overview of the project’s advancements during its first year in Indonesia.
2024
Started in April 2024 until present, Yayasan Pure Earth Indonesia (PE Indonesia) and Vital Strategies (VS) have been in discussion with the Ministry of Health (MOH) of the Republic of Indonesia in designing and implementing the new national program to identify, monitor and reduce lead exposure. The working plan is still being developed together by the working team. Quite many inputs came up from the members of the working team, which consists of members from various institutions, including PE Indonesia, VS and directorates (Dit) under MOH, such as Environmental Health as the Coordinator, Public Health Governance (Takelkesmas), Center for Health Development Policy (BKPK), Data and Information Center (Pusdatin), as well as cross-sectoral government agencies, i.e. Central Bureau of Statistics (BPS) and many more. The last technical coordination meeting was just held on June 24, 2024, where small group meetings will be carried out to finalize and agree on the working plan.
In the context of the implementation of the “Strengthening Health System to Reduce Lead Exposure” program, Blood Lead Level (BLL) Surveillance (SKTD) piloting activities will be carried out to obtain data on the prevalence of BLL in Indonesian children as reference material in efforts to strengthen the health system in Indonesia. The piloting activity will be carried out in two stages, the first phase of which is planned to be carried out in the second semester of 2024 with the aim of monitoring BLL in children in Indonesia and understanding the increasing prevalence of BLL in children, evaluating the capacity of existing resources, and testing the feasibility of implementing national BLL. Meanwhile, the second phase is planned to be implemented in 2026 with the aim of initiating the integration of SKTD into periodic active surveillance.
Implementing Partners
Partners include the Ministry of Health, Yayasan Pure Earth Indonesia, and Vital Strategies.
Project duration:
January 2023 – December 2027
Funding provided by:
Resources
The Toxic Truth Report ↗
Pure Earth and UNICEF, 2020
Lead Fact Sheet↗
Pure Earth
Videos
Pure Earth Indonesia: Strengthening Health Systems to Reduce Lead Exposure 2023 Annual Report
A Global Initiative
Today, 1 in 3 children have enough lead in their blood to cause permanent brain damage. This project is part of a broader initiative by Pure Earth to strengthen expertise in national healthcare systems to prevent, identify, and treat lead exposure in 5 countries. An estimated 292 million of these lead-poisoned children live in Colombia, India (Maharashtra), Indonesia, Kyrgyzstan, and Peru. This 5-year project will help these 5 countries to overcome key technical and clinical hurdles to effectively identify, treat, and prevent childhood lead exposures, and to implement effective national action to monitor and reduce lead exposure risks.
Learn more about each project in Colombia, Kyrgyzstan, Peru, and Maharashtra, India.
