Maternal Mortality Rate (MMR) in Semarang District continues to increase every year. The data released by Semarang District Health Department put the 2014 MMR at 144 deaths per 100,000 births. Instead of declining, the Health Department’s data shows that 2015 first semester MMR increased to 147 deaths per 100,000 births. This situation indicates that the health status of the people is still not good enough.
The local government is not the only one responsible for dealing with this health problem. However, the bottom line is that the people also have the responsibility as big as the governments to address the problem.
As a realization of civil society participation and to improve the quality of health services, particularly the service of the community health center, Center for Regional Studies and Information (PATTIRO) and PATTIRO Semarang in collaboration with the Government of Semarang District develop an SMS-based complaint service application named SMS MatraSTAT.
The SMS-based application is chosen as SMS is still considered as a mean that can ease people in Indonesia to communicate with each other. “We decide to develop an SMS based application because it is easy to use and inexpensive, especially to handle emergency situations and the complaints of the people”, stated the Expert Staff of Semarang Regent Ani Rahardjo in SMS MatraSTAT launching in Ungaran (6/10/2015).
There are four menus in SMS MatraSTAT application service. They are data menu, emergency menu, info menu, and complaint menu. Director of PATTIRO Semarang Dini Inayati explained that the data menu is created to help the village midwives in reporting the condition of the pregnant women in their working areas. Meanwhile, the emergency menu is established to help them in providing some treatments as well as emergency referrals for the mothers and their babies. “The data and emergency menu can only be used by the village midwives. It is because they are the one who understand and are able to decide whether the mother’s condition is an emergency or not. Besides, the midwives also have the health data of the people”, Dini said. She added, to make sure the success of people health condition monitoring activities, particularly the pregnant women, Task Executor Semarang Regent Gunawan Wibisono will directly oversee the utilization of SMS MatraSTAT emergency menu.
While the data and emergency menu can only be used by the village midwives, Dini explained, the info and complaint menu can be used freely by the people. “We hope that the info menu will be able to accommodate the information of people’s health status. And for the complaint menu, this will be the tool the people can use to deliver their complaints regarding the health care service provided by the community health centers as well as the hospitals”, she asserted.
On the same occassion, PATTIRO Semarang Social Accountability Program Team Dwi Yunita said that when the Semarang Health Department officer received the complaint from the people, they have at least 48 hours to verify and take follow-up action in response to the complaints. “To make this regulation works in accordance with our hope, the people must also participate actively in monitoring its implementation”, stated Ita.
So far, PATTIRO Semarang has established cooperation with six community health centers and two local hospitals in Semarang District to implement this complaint service system. In the future, this kind of cooperation will be expanded to other 26 community health centers in Semarang District.
“We hope SMS MatraSTAT will be able to support early warning system for handling the birth process and other illness suffered by the pregnant women. By utilizing this application, people now also have a wider space to participate in improving health care service in Semarang District”, Dini asserted.
The name of Matra is an abbreviation of Semarang District motto, Independent (Mandiri), Orderly (Tertib), and Prosperous (Sejahtera). The word STAT which is the acronym for Statistic is chosen because this application is supported by the use of information technology.
