More Systematic Handling, Moeldoko Believes Stunting Below 14 Percent Will Be Reached By 2024

KSP Moeldoko. (Instagram @dr_moeldoko)

JAKARTA - President Joko Widodo is targeting the stunting rate to fall below 14 by 2024. Presidential Chief of Staff (KSP) Moeldoko is optimistic about this target given the increasingly systematic handling of stunting in Indonesia.

This was conveyed by Moeldoko while attending the Standby Call for the Assistance Team for the Indonesian Family Moving at the Subang District Square, West Java, Thursday, May 12.

"Currently, there are 600,000 Indonesian Family Assistance personnel who are ready to implement a strategy to reduce stunting, so I believe that President Jokowi's target of reducing stunting to below 14 percent by 2024 can be achieved," said Moeldoko in an official statement.

According to the 2021 family data collection (PK 21), the number of families at risk of tengkes in Indonesia reaches 21.9 million families.

To deal with these problems, the National Population and Family Planning Agency (BKKBN) deployed 600 thousand personnel who are members of the 200 thousand Family Assistance Teams (TPK) who are ready to provide information and services to families to prevent tengkes. According to Moeldoko, there are three main actors who play a role important in solving the problem of tengkes, namely midwives, PKK movers, and family planning (KB) cadres.

"With these three main actors, there is no problem that cannot be solved, even the problem of stunting they can solve," said the retired general.

Meanwhile, one of the tasks of the Presidential Staff Office (KSP) is to oversee and ensure that national strategic programs can run well.

Stunting is one of the issues that gets the main attention of the Jokowi-Ma'aruf Amin government.

In fact, Vice President Ma'ruf Amin has targeted the stunting prevalence rate in Indonesia in 2022 to decrease at least 3 percent compared to 2021 which was at 24.4 percent.

However, the stunting prevalence rate in 2021 has significantly decreased compared to 2018 which was 30.8 percent.

West Java is one of the provinces that is currently working hard to achieve the target of zero stunting by 2023.

West Java Governor Ridwan Kamil said the stunting rate in West Java was already below 13 percent, one of which was influenced by stunting handling innovations, namely the Toddler Food Ojek (Omaba) program.

"Unfortunately, our health infrastructure is not sufficient, for example, the number of Puskesmas is still very limited. In the future, the number of Puskesmas must increase so that they can carry out health defense properly and prevent stunting," said the man who is familiarly called Kang Emil.