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)