Govt kicks off third round of polio vaccination drive

The Jakarta Post, Jakarta/Semarang/Bandung

The third round of the nationwide polio vaccination campaign took place on Wednesday as health authorities work to wipe out the crippling disease, which reemerged here in April a decade after the country was declared polio-free.

First Lady Kristiani Herrawati kicked off this latest round of the campaign by administering oral vaccines to 10 children at a vaccination post in Jakarta. She expressed hope authorities would achieve their goal of vaccinating 23.6 million children under the age of five across the country.

"God willing, the third round will be 100 percent successful," she said.

During the first round of vaccinations in June, health authorities reached only 95 percent of targeted children. The second round in September saw a success rate of 97.5 percent.

The wives of several Cabinet members and high-ranking officials were dispatched to locations across the country to help ensure the success of this latest round of vaccinations.

Minister of Health Siti Fadilah Supari, accompanied by Vice President Jusuf Kalla's wife Mufidah, led the vaccinations in her hometown Padang, West Sumatra.

"If the (current) campaign is successful, in March 2006 we will be polio-free," the minister said.

The government plans to hold two more rounds of vaccinations next year to ensure the complete eradication of the disease.

State-owned pharmaceutical company Bio Farma, which manufactured the vaccines for the campaign, said it produced two types of vaccine for health authorities.

Marzuki Abdullah, the director of Bio Farma, said the company distributed the Monovalen type of vaccine for Java, Lampung and South Sumatra, where a number of polio cases have been reported, while it produced the Trivalen type of vaccine for other regions.

The Monovalen type of vaccine is more potent than the Trivalen type, he said. Bio Farma produced a total of 19.8 million doses for the campaign.

"The three regions where polio has been reported require a more potent vaccine than other regions that have no reported polio cases," he said in Bandung.

In Semarang, Central Java, thousands of children were vaccinated at 1,554 health posts. The campaign in the city was led by Mayor Sukawi Sutarip, accompanied by the wife of State Minister for State Enterprises Tien Sugiharto.

In South Sumatra, authorities set up 9,012 vaccination posts, manned by 27,036 health workers, to vaccinate a targeted 861,052 children.

Nationwide 250,000 vaccination posts were established to treat over 23 million children.

Polio, which is thought to have been brought back here from Nigeria, has affected 295 people across the country since it was detected in April.

Polio spreads when unvaccinated people come into contact with the feces of those with the virus, often through contaminated water in places with poor hygiene or inadequate sewage systems.

The disease attacks the nervous system in young children, causing paralysis, muscular atrophy and sometimes death. Only about one in 200 of those infected with polio ever develop symptoms.