Health workers step up polio vaccination drive

Health workers step up polio vaccination drive

Michael Casey, Associated Press/Jakarta

Thousands of health workers were going door-to-door on Wednesday in search of children who were missed in the nationwide polio immunization drive on Tuesday, after some parents expressed fear the vaccine was unsafe or violated Islamic law.

Turnout in Tuesday's campaign that targeted 24 million children was good in the capital and other urban areas, said Unicef's Claire Hajaj, but the level of participation in some rural villages appeared to be much lower.

"It's not totally unexpected on the first day of a campaign like this," said Hajaj, who works on the U.N. agency's global campaign to eradicate polio in six countries where it is endemic and 17 others, including Indonesia, that have recently been re- infected.

"That is why today's house-to-house drive can be make or break."

Polio has sickened 225 children and one adult since the virus reappeared in Indonesia in March for the first time in a decade, and the World Health Organization is worried the crippling disease could spread to other Southeast Nations if not tackled head on.

The Indonesian government was pulling out all stops to help. Tens of thousands of health workers fanned out across the sprawling archipelago on Tuesday, and 245,000 posts were set up at clinics, bus depots, rail stations and airports.

The Army and police helped deliver vaccine - by plane, boat, bicycle and foot -- to some of Indonesia's 6,000 inhabited islands.

Preliminary turnout figures were just starting to trickle in. In Bogor, a district on the heavily populated Java island, more than 90 percent of all 533,825 youngsters targeted got the vaccine, local health workers said.

But in some villages only 75 percent showed up.

Many of those parents were dissuaded by false media reports - and claims by some local health workers -- that sick children could not be vaccinated, said Dr. Eulis Wulantari, a doctor in Bogor, where 25 children have been stricken by the virus.

She and others taking part in Wednesday's door-to-door sweep were trying to convince parents otherwise.

In Pabuaran, an impoverished farming village about two hours outside Jakarta, more than 100 of 268 children didn't get vaccinated on Tuesday.

"My baby had a fever and they (village health workers) said don't bother with the vaccine," said Nur, a local resident.

But she agreed to let her 1-1/2-year-old daughter get vaccinated on Wednesday after Unicef and local health workers told her it was safe.

"It's no problem. I was never told it was important to get her vaccinated," Nur said.

Rumors have also circulated that vaccinations led to the death of four children and violate Islamic law, similar to whisperings that spread through Nigeria during a polio outbreak there in 2003.

Vaccinations in the African nation were suspended for several months after radical Islamic preachers told parents they believed they were part of a U.S. plot against Muslims.

WHO is worried the virus could cross Indonesia's borders and turn into an epidemic if it isn't stopped by the rainy season, which begins in October.

"Papua New Guinea, Thailand, Malaysia are a concern. China is a concern," said Georg Petersen, WHO's representative in Indonesia. "In all these countries, there are areas where the immunization coverage is not good."

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.

It attacks the nervous system in young children, causing paralysis, muscular atrophy and sometimes death. Only about one in 200 of those infected ever develops symptoms. A second round of vaccinations will take place on Sept. 27.