New polio vaccination drive in September

New polio vaccination drive in September

JAKARTA (JP): The municipality will launch its third polio
vaccination drive on Sept. 2 and on Oct. 7, the head of the
Committee of National Immunization, Soenarjudardji, said
yesterday.

Soenarjudardji said that vaccinations would be carried out on
972,100 children under five years old. He said that the committee
had also urged women between 15 and 39 years old to take Tetanus
Toxoid (TT) vaccinations.

The Oct. 7 campaign includes measles vaccinations for 121,954
children between nine months and 59 months old.

The first vaccination drive in 1995 involved 1,902,827
children and the second in 1996 involved 1,979,397 children. In
1996, the committee targeted 202,953 women for TT vaccinations,
but it recorded that 342,042 people had participated.

TT and measles vaccinations were not conducted in the 1995
drive.

He said the committee would also set up a research team to
study polio, a disease which could incapacitate or even kill
children under 15 years old. The survey is called Surveillance
AFP.

Governor Surjadi Soedirdja, who was also present at the
committee meeting, called on neighborhood administrators to
report immediately to nearby clinics if there was ever a polio
outbreak.

Surjadi said the municipality intended to fight the malignant
polio virus and minimize the number of its victims to one in
every 10,000 births.

Polio vaccinations are particularly targeted at children who
live in susceptible areas.

The city health agency said areas most susceptible to TT were
places where tetanus had occurred in the past three years, or
where only 80 percent of pregnant women had been vaccinated and
where births were delivered by midwives.

An area is considered prone to TT when less than 80 percent of
a population is vaccinated within the past four years, the agency
said. (10)