Govt optimistic over polio vaccination drive
Ridwan Max Sijabat, The Jakarta Post/Jakarta
The government expressed optimism on Friday that it would be able to curb the country's first polio outbreak in a decade, which has infected 226 children nationwide.
Minister of Health Siti Fadilah Supari said that after an intensive antipolio campaign that involved two world organizations and local ones, the government had scheduled the second round of the two-day immunization drive for Aug. 30 and Sept. 27, with a target of immunizing more than 24 million children under the age of five.
"Certainly, I am optimistic. This time, we are more aggressive than during the previous vaccination drive and so are WHO and Unicef," she said.
She said the Ministry of Health has obtained financial and technical aid from WHO and Unicef, and promoted the antipolio drive with the help of religious and women's organizations such as Muhammadiyah, Muslimat NU, Aisyiah and the Christian Women's Organization to make the planned vaccination program a success.
The minister further said that after disseminating guidelines and establishing vaccination posts in all strategic locations, the government had distributed almost 70 million doses of polio vaccine supplied by state-owned pharmaceutical firm PT Bio Farma and donor agencies, to all provinces.
WHO representative in Indonesia Georg Petersen expressed a similar hope, saying that his organization, along with Unicef and the U.S. Centre for Disease Control (CDC), was making an all-out effort to make the vaccination campaign a national success.
He warned that the crippling virus would fast spread to neighboring countries in the region if Indonesia failed to curb the polio outbreak. That is why all elements of society need to play an active part in the immunization program to ensure it reaches its targets, he said.
Indonesia was declared free of polio in 1995 but the disease reappeared in April this year with three children under five diagnosed as having polio, in Sukabumi, West Java. The disease, which is believed to have been brought back here from Nigeria, has now crippled 226 victims in 108 villages in Central and West Java, Banten, Lampung and Jakarta.
The upcoming second round of the vaccination program follows the previous limited program -- which covered only three provinces but failed to reach all the targeted 6.5 million children due to strong resistance from certain communities as they deemed the vaccines unsafe.
According to the latest data from the health ministry, the number of cases of acute paralysis caused by polio has reached 377.
The Cirebon regental administration has detected two new cases of polio in the regency.
Chief of the local health office J. Suwanta said in Cirebon on Friday that Eti Nueti, three, and one-year-old Kisyanto, both children from Grogol village, in Kepetakan subdistrict, were positively infected with the virus and his office was still investigating how they contracted the disease.
Meanwhile, the Indonesian Ulema Council (MUI) has declared that the oral polio vaccines to be given to children in the second round of the immunization program are safe.
"The polio vaccines are safe for consumption and permitted under Islamic law," MUI secretary-general Ichwan Sam said.
Ichwan said the MUI had issued the edict since certain communities in the society doubted the vaccines' safety.
He said the MUI had disseminated the edict to all clerics nationwide in a bid to encourage parents to bring their children to vaccination posts on Aug. 30 and Sept. 27.