CAIRO, April 29, 2006 (IslamOnline.net) – Increasing malnutrition among Indonesian children and women is largely blamed for the local traditions and lacking interests of the local administrations, Indonesian experts and officials warned on Saturday, April 29.

"The problem affected mostly women and children because the local tradition required men as the primary income earners to eat food first, with the remainder going to women and children," Achmad Fedyani Saifuddin, Anthropologist from the University of Indonesia, told The Jakarta Post.

Nearly five million children are suffering from malnutrition, according to the Indonesian health ministry 2004 data, with 1.5 million severely malnourished.

The figures are believed to have increased in 2005.

The data also showed that five out of 10 pregnant women suffer from a lack of nutrition, increasing the infant mortality rate and the number of babies born with low birth weights.

Achmad said around 50 percent of infants in Sambas, West Kalimantan, were malnourished because of their dietary habits.

In Yahmukimo, Papua, researches showed that malnutrition in the area was also blamed in part for the decreasing amount of agricultural land because of deforestation.

The "uninterested" local administrations are also blamed for the health problem.

"It's shameful that they (the local administrations) won't acknowledge a major problem like this," said Tatang S. Falah, the head of the Health Ministry's nutrition alert division.

Social workers argue that sub-district heads often refuse to acknowledge the existence of poorly-fed children.

They maintain that the problem was being muzzled in the name of politics.

Leny H.R., a social worker from the Healthy Indonesia Foundation, said that social workers were also forbidden to mention the word "malnutrition" in reports.

"Maybe they're afraid of how a public acknowledgment like this would affect their careers," she said.

The lack of government support has forced Leny to treat 20 malnourished children from donations.

"Luckily some private donors have come up and provided funding for the 20 children for three months, until the end of April," she said.

Leny explained that the donors provided milk, biscuits, and Rp 50,000 (about US$5.7) a day for food.

She said that she would have to find new sources of funding to continue the treatment for the next three months.