Polio vaccination drive intensified as cases rise
Polio vaccination drive intensified as cases rise
Reuters, Jakarta
Indonesia is scrambling to combat a major outbreak of polio with
plans to vaccinate more than 24 million children across the
populous nation before the onset of the rainy season, officials
said on Friday.
The number of children infected has risen rapidly in recent
weeks to 122, according to health ministry and United Nations
data. The previous figure announced earlier this week was 111.
Polio, a water-borne disease that attacks the nervous system,
can cause irreversible paralysis in hours. Children are most at
risk.
The illness re-emerged in May in Indonesia, which had been
polio-free since 1995. The outbreak first hit villages near the
West Java city of Sukabumi and spread to adjacent provinces.
Two rounds of immunizations were carried in late May and late
June in West Java and Banten provinces and the capital Jakarta.
Both rounds reached around six million children.
However, recent reports show disease has spread to another
province on densely populated Java island and even jumped to
nearby Sumatra island.
"The government has decided to conduct a national immunization
on August 30, followed by another round on September 27. The
target is to cover all children under five which numbers around
24.3 million, in all provinces," Health Minister Siti Fadilah
Supari told reporters in a news conference.
She added Indonesia should be free from polio again by 2008.
David Heymann, the World Health Organization's polio
eradication representative, in the same briefing said the polio
virus was able to spread due poor health services in some parts
of the country.
"When the polio virus arrived in Indonesia, it found a weak
point because local immunization services had not been able to
maintain the protection level high enough among young children,"
he said.
"The polio virus transmits very easily and it transmits even
more easily in the rainy season. So as the rainy season begins,
virus transmission could even be greater," Heymann said.
Indonesia's wet season usually occurs from October to April.
The global battle against polio has faced setbacks in the past
two years since Nigeria's northern state of Kano banned
immunization out of fear it could cause sterility or spread
HIV/AIDS. Vaccinations resumed after the 10-month ban.
But the virus spread across Africa, crossed the Red Sea into
Saudi Arabia and Yemen, and reached Indonesia, infecting
previously polio-free countries along the way.
Indonesian health officials have said the virus may have been
carried by a migrant worker or a Haj pilgrim who visited Saudi
Arabia before returning to Indonesia, the world's most populous
Muslim nation.