Polio vaccination campaign to start as more cases confirmed

Yuli Tri Suwarni, The Jakarta Post, Bandung/Jakarta

Just a day before the start of a mass polio vaccination campaign, the Ministry of Health reported on Monday two more cases of the crippling virus, bringing the number of sufferers to 16.

"The two newly confirmed cases came from samples taken from Lebak regency and Tamansari village in Bogor regency (both in West Java)," Moh. Nadhirin, an officer with the ministry's Directorate General of Contagious Disease Control, told The Jakarta Post.

He said his office was waiting for the results of 10 stool samples from acute flaccid paralysis cases from Sukabumi, 34 from Lebak and 14 others from Bogor.

The health ministry will launch a mass polio vaccination campaign in the provinces of Banten, Jakarta and West Java on Tuesday to protect an estimated 6.4 million children under the age of five from the waterborne disease.

During the day, Minister of Health Siti Fadilah Supari is scheduled to visit a community health center in Campaka village, Bandung, to observe the program.

"The vaccination will begin at 8 a.m. and last until 12 a.m. in every designated post, and it will be free of charge," the ministry's director general of contagious diseases control, Umar Fahmi Ahmadi, said last week, adding that each vaccination post would serve between 100 and 150 children.

Despite the declared readiness of both vaccines and field officers, the West Java local health agency reported a possible delay in the vaccination campaign in remote areas in Bandung, Cianjur, Karawang, Garut, Tasikmalaya, Purwakarta, Subang and Sukabumi.

West Java Environmental Health Agency Director Fatimah Resmiati said that it would take between one and three days for health officers to reach thousands of children in the remote areas concerned. "But we promise that every child will be vaccinated," she said.

The campaign is aimed at vaccinating all children under the age of five, even in the absence of comprehensive vaccination records.

"Each child require a minimum of four doses of oral polio vaccine. But if the mother is not sure whether her child has been vaccinated, the child had better receive a full dose," Indonesian Pediatrician Association chairman Hadiono D. Pusponegoro said.

He dismissed fears that the vaccinations would produce side effects in children who received more than the required dosage.

The health ministry, with the World Health Organization's support, conducted an outbreak response immunization program on May 25 to protect around 22,000 children in Giri Jaya village and its five neighboring villages in Sukabumi, where the first positive polio case was found in March.

All the children infected by polio had no history of immunization. It outbreak is believed to have been caused by an imported polio strain from Nigeria, where the world last saw a polio outbreak.

Indonesia was declared a polio-free country in 1995, although it still carried out vaccination programs for children until 2002. The Ministry of Health has also set up a polio surveillance team to monitor acute flaccid paralysis cases, which are usually caused by polio, among children under 15.

Poliomyelitis, widely known as polio, is a highly infectious viral disease that invades the nervous system and can cause total paralysis, even death.

The virus enters the body through the mouth and multiplies in the intestines, which is why oral vaccination is preferred. Transmissions of the virus by immune and partially immune adults and children is possible, and is likely to happen in countries where sanitation systems are substandard.(003)