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.