City starts house checks for polio

City starts house checks for polio

The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

Health officials and volunteers are going from house to house to
immunize children under five who did not show up to receive the
two drops of oral vaccination on Tuesday.

City Health Agency spokesperson Zelvyno said the door-to-door
drive would be carried out for a week starting on Wednesday.

"We really do hope that parents will not refuse health workers
who visit their homes ... because we want to ensure that the city
is free from the wild polio virus," she said.

Agency data showed that 818,581 children under five took part
in the massive polio vaccination on Tuesday, or 88 percent of the
estimated 923,000 children in the city.

"The participation level in most areas in the city is quite
high, although the level was still below May and June levels,
which were around 92 percent," she said.

The Thousand Islands regency enjoys the highest percentage of
participation with 94.46 percent, followed by East Jakarta with
94.05 percent.

The lowest participation was recorded in North Jakarta with
86.5 percent, followed by Central Jakarta with 88.02 percent.

The agency advised the public to ignore doctors who had told
parents not to take their children to get oral polio vaccines
because they argued the children had already received enough
vaccine.

All children would be well-protected if they received four
doses of the vaccine over a certain period, the agency argued.

"Many pediatricians fail to encourage parents to participate
in the vaccination drive to free the country from the wild polio
virus," agency head Abdul Chalik Masulili said

"What we are afraid of, is that the virus will stay in
children who have not received the vaccine and we will remain in
danger of a further polio outbreak," he said.

Indonesia had been free of polio for over a decade until the
first new case was discovered in early May in Sukabumi, West
Java, some 60 kilometers southeast of Jakarta.

By August, polio had claimed eight lives, mostly babies and
toddlers, across the country.

The government conducted an initial polio vaccination drive in
three provinces -- Jakarta, West Java and Banten -- in May and
June, but around 10 percent of the targeted 6.4 million children
there were estimated to have missed out.

The first round of the national polio immunization drive was
held on Aug. 30, when 92 percent of some 24 million children
under five across the country were vaccinated.

Some parents have been reluctant to take their children to
vaccination posts due to fears of the medicine's adverse side-
effects.

Doubt over the standard of polio vaccine was high after
reports by the Legal Aid Institute for Health (LBH Kesehatan)
that some children had fallen seriously ill after taking their
first vaccination.

These reports were later discredited after the children's
illnesses were found to be unrelated to the vaccines.