A polio-free society
Given the scale and magnitude of the current anti-polio campaign -- about 21.7 million children aged under five years old are to be immunized within the next two months -- the national immunization week which started yesterday is indeed impressive. Some 40 million people are estimated to be involved in this campaign, including the children's families, which makes it the biggest campaign ever organized in this country.
The target is no less ambitious: to eradicate polio in this country, thus making our next generation a polio-free society. Although according to the Ministry of Health's statistics there were only 15 polio cases reported in 1994, as compared to around 3,000 cases in the mid-1980s, we believe that the ongoing campaign is timely.
Polio, which attacks the central nervous system and causes temporary or permanent paralysis, has taken a large toll in the past. We can see victims not only in rural areas, but in urban centers as well, even among educated and well-to-do families. This is surely an indication that ignorance can be partly blamed for the situation.
For this reason a national campaign at the current level, in which neighborhood associations (RTs and RWs), Family Welfare Movements (PKK) and health officials conduct door-to-door checks where necessary, is indeed the best way to bring the virus-borne disease under control. By making immunization mandatory, the authorities want to make sure that no child under five escapes the campaign although, as usual, some well-to-do families tend to grumble and prefer to send their children to private doctors to avoid having to stand in line at local health centers.
Being a nation where the mortality rate among children under five years of age is still considerably high, polio could threatened our future human resources development plans and thus hamper our entire development program. Hence, after the present anti-polio campaign, the government should follow it up with the immunization of other diseases such as measles as well as diphtheria, paratyphoid and typhoid.
Such campaigns may be costly, especially when we may not get sponsors from the United States and Australia as we have in the current US$19 million anti-polio drive. But since it would be an investment in human capital, we should put this kind of campaign high on our list of priorities. Certainly anyone will agree that it is better to use the money to invest in our future generations, rather than waste it on unproductive activities as we did in the past or let the money be pocketed by unscrupulous officials.
One interesting aspect of the anti-polio campaign is the concept that the government could recover the cost of a previous 10-year polio campaign within three years by not having to spend money on new vaccinations. We believe that acting in a preventive manner should be applied to other health problems, particularly smoking-related ones. It is no secret that the government is reluctant to organize a large-scale anti-smoking campaign even though it is surely aware of the dangers of nicotine, because taxes derived from the tobacco industry constitute a big chunk of our tax revenues. For the same reason, the Ministry of Health also seems reluctant to release figures of the money spent on the treatment of lung cancer and other smoking-related diseases.
We believe it is time for us to be more rational. If we can organize an anti-polio campaign, surely we could organize similar drives in other areas as well. After all, the principle remains the same and the target is identical: to make sure that our coming generations are increasingly better off and healthier.