Misinformation retards polio purge, officials say

Misinformation retards polio purge, officials say

The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

Parents' fears of the side effects of the polio vaccination is
increasing the risk of exposing their infants to polio, officials
say, thus allowing the virus to spread within the country and
beyond, particularly in the rainy season.

The nationwide immunization drive scheduled for Aug. 30 and
Sept. 22 is in the global spotlight as experts are betting on it
to contain the spread of the disease.

In the previous vaccination round in late June, the first
being in May, Minister of Health Siti Fadilah Supari said that
she "lost" 700,000 infants under five who did not get their
mandatory second polio vaccination because parents were afraid of
harmful effects.

In a meeting with editors on Friday, she blamed misleading
coverage of a child who died after being vaccinated, which led
parents to fear their children becoming sick or dying after being
vaccinated against polio. The June rounds targeted more than six
million children.

"It is these children who will fall victim" if parents
continue to resist vaccination, the minister added.

A visiting official from the United Nations Children's Fund
(Unicef) working on the worldwide campaign against polio said
that Unicef reports confirmed that the death of the child had
nothing to do with the administration of the polio vaccine.

Claire Hajaj of the Unicef headquarters in New York said the
next immunization drive provided "a window of opportunity" to rid
Indonesia and the world of polio.

In an earlier drive in West Africa she said "civil wars were
stopped" once the campaign against polio was launched, as
vaccines were transported across the region.

Children in Indonesia, Hajaj said, are at "a most vulnerable
point" regarding polio, citing three reasons. First, parents have
been frightened by coverage of the adverse effects of polio
vaccinations. "So in the middle of an outbreak many children did
not get polio vaccinations," Hajaj said.

Besides, she added, a lot of children have not been give
routine immunization in pockets across the country. A breakdown
of community and neighborhood health systems have been blamed for
the return of ailments such as polio and malnutrition in the last
few years.

The third reason for the current vulnerability of children to
polio, Hajaj said, was because of the upcoming peak of the rainy
season, when the virus spreads faster. "Infants play in the dirt,
they put their hands in their mouths ...," she related.

She said that when she visited areas with health officials
last week, many parents refused to have their toddlers
vaccinated. "It was frustrating to see mothers clinging to their
children; there is no cure for polio, but we have the vaccine!"

The vaccine, she said, has since 1988 saved five million
children "who would otherwise be paralyzed".

In 1988, 1,000 children contracted polio every day, she added,
compared to only 1,000 a year since 2004.

All infants under five need not only routine polio
vaccinations but also the protection of immunization drives,
Hajaj said.