Three-year campaign to rid RI of polio
Three-year campaign to rid RI of polio
JAKARTA (JP): The government plans to launch a massive nationwide immunization program to eradicate polio by the year 2000.
Minister of Health Sujudi, who announced the ambitious plan at the Ministry of Home Affairs on Monday, said the immunization program will be launched in mid-September and repeated at the same time in 1996 and 1997.
Sujudi said that evidence from other countries has shown that polio can only be eradicated through massive immunization campaigns and not on a sporadic basis.
Costa Rica, Chile, Argentina, the Philippines and China all managed to eradicate polio through successive nationwide immunization campaigns. Both North and South America have been polio-free since 1991 after 10 years of campaigns, Sujudi said after meeting with government officials and non-governmental organizations involved in the program.
The program is part of the World Health Organization's plan to completely eradicate polio from the face of the earth. If the global campaign is successful by the year 2000, two diseases will have been eliminated from the world in just two decades. Small pox was eliminated in 1980.
Sujudi said some 21 million children in Indonesia will receive polio immunization shots free of charge during the first phase of the campaign, which will also immunize against tetanus and measles.
The government has allocated an annual budget of Rp 45 billion (US$20 million) for the program. Local administrations and donor agencies are also expected to help raise funds, though he did not elaborate on the total cost of the program.
Official figures show that nearly 90 percent of all children in Indonesia have been vaccinated against polio, and that the number of cases dropped drastically from 773 in 1988 to only 30 in 1993.
However successful, Sujudi warned that until the disease is completely eliminated, an outbreak of polio is still possible.
The minister said tetanus is still prevalent in Indonesia because only 60 percent of children have been given immunization. The immunization against measles have reached 90 percent of all children, he said. (29)