Parents told to take their kids for polio vaccination

Damar Harsanto, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

Fearing a polio outbreak in the capital, the Jakarta administration called on all Jakartans to take their children to get a free polio vaccination between May 31 and June 28.

"All children below five-years-old need to get the vaccinations, including foreigners. Please, do not hesitate to bring children to nearby vaccination posts. It will be free of charge," City Health Agency spokesperson Zelvyno told The Jakarta Post.

Every third or fourth neighborhood unit will have a vaccination post, manned by four to five health workers.

The post will also be established at bus terminals and railway stations to ensure that children recently arriving from other villages get the vaccination.

Zelvyno added that the agency had so far registered around 707,000 children under the age of five, who will receive the vaccinations. "We will continue to update our data to be more accurate."

She added that the health workers would also make door-to-door checks for children who fail to show up during the vaccination days.

She added that the agency was currently in the process of recruiting health workers to carry out the vaccinations.

Those workers will go through a brief training session with officers from public health centers.

The administration said that the massive vaccination campaign would cost approximately Rp 10 billion (US$1.06 million).

Children who have received vaccinations recently are also obliged to go to a nearby post.

Pediatricians claimed that ideally a baby must receive the polio vaccination three times in the first year and once every year up to age five to become truly immune to the polio virus.

Side effects, such as diarrhea and fever, are rare. An extra vaccination given to children will not do any harm, they also claimed.

Several polio cases were discovered last month in and around Sukabumi regency in West Java, which is about 60 kilometers south of Jakarta. The virus, which usually affects children, likely was carried by someone, or a group of people, who had returned from the Middle East, local health officials have speculated. Indonesian haj pilgrims and migrant workers regularly travel to Saudi Arabia.

So far, there have been at least eight confirmed polio cases across the country over the last two months.

The health ministry and its local agencies are required monitor hospitals and public health centers to find any patients with acute flaccid paralysis, a symptom of polio.

There are at least 14 other known diseases besides polio, which can cause such paralysis, such as meningitis.

As of Friday, the Jakarta health agency had reported 23 cases of acute flaccid paralysis in the last month, but so far none of those have been confirmed to be polio.

Last year, the administration discovered 50 patients with such paralysis, but, according to the health ministry, none of those was determined to be polio.

Indonesia had been declared polio-free a decade after setting up health service posts, Posyandu, in almost every neighborhood unit in the country during the administration of president Soeharto. At those posts, children received regular immunizations against a variety of diseases, including polio. However, the budgets for the Posyandu was cut back drastically since the economic crisis began in 1997, leaving many poor children with no access to vaccinations.