Health
Indonesia aims to vaccinate 1.2 million children in Aceh as 4 polio cases are discovered
Indonesia’s Aceh province started vaccinating nearly 1.2 million children after four were infected with polio.
Key Point:
- Aceh declares polio ‘extraordinary event’ after 4 cases discovered
- Some parents were reluctant to get their children vaccinated because of vaccine misinformation
- Risk of polio outbreak in Australia is ‘moderate but plausible’, experts say
Toddlers line up for vaccination with children in school uniforms and their parents in Sigli town, Pidi district, Aceh province, Monday.
On the first day of vaccine introduction, health officials in Pidi district said more than 14,000 children aged 0-12 months had been vaccinated, or a target of 15%.
The move comes after the virus was detected in October in a 7-year-old boy with partial paralysis near Sigli.
Three more cases were detected in the province on 19 November, prompting the Indonesian government to declare polio a ‘special event’ and promote a mass vaccination campaign.
Maxi Laing Rondonou, director of the Ministry of Health’s Department of Disease Control and Prevention, said none of the three children received basic vaccinations.
“Indonesia has been declared eradicated, so it should be reported as an outbreak, but it turns out that wild poliovirus is still present,” he said.
Indonesia and 10 other Southeast Asian countries declared polio-free in 2014 by the World Health Organization (WHO).
Rondonuwu said his ministry is conducting door-to-door inspections to ensure there are no unreported infections.
“There is no cure for polio. The only cure is prevention and the preventive measure is vaccination,” Rondonou said.
Last week, Indonesia’s Health Minister Budi Gunadi Sadikin said there were still parents within the regent who were reluctant to vaccinate their children.
Sadikin said he was reluctant after a measles-rubella epidemic several years ago.
“Lack of a clean and healthy lifestyle” was also cited as a cause of the new polio cases, Sadikin said, according to a CNN Indonesia report.
There were still many residents who defecate in the open in the river where children sometimes swim.
According to WHO, poliovirus is commonly transmitted from person to person via the “fecal-oral” route.
resistant to vaccination
Officials said the conservative state’s polio immunization rates lag behind the rest of the country.
For comparison, only 50.9% of babies born in Aceh in 2021 were vaccinated against polio.
Vaccination coverage was the second lowest nationally after West Papua, where only 43.4% of infants were vaccinated.
Efforts to eradicate the disease were also hampered by widespread misinformation that vaccines were incompatible with religious beliefs.
Aceh is particularly conservative and is the only province in Indonesia allowed to practice Sharia, a concession made by the central government in 2006 to end the war with the separatists.
False rumors that the polio vaccine contains pork and alcohol, which are prohibited by Muslim faith, have spread, especially in rural areas, complicating vaccination efforts, many Indonesians said. Hanif, head of the Aceh Department of Health, which also goes by one name, said.
“We cannot do it alone. We need the support of all stakeholders, including religious leaders, to help people understand the importance of vaccination,” Hanif said.
In 2019, the Ulema Council of Indonesia issued a fatwa stating that it is permissible to receive the polio vaccine, especially for immunocompromised children.
But Azhar, the father of a 7-year-old son who contracted polio, said after other villagers told him vaccines could contain harmful chemicals and non-halal substances, he gave his son He said he chose not to vaccinate.
“My neighbor told me that my son doesn’t need to be vaccinated and that he doesn’t want my son to get sick from toxic chemicals that are against Islam,” said a 45-year-old man. said.
Dewi Safitri, a mother of three who had her children vaccinated on Monday, said she just didn’t know it was necessary.
She said she was convinced after health workers explained that her children risked paralysis and death if they weren’t vaccinated.
“I didn’t even know about vaccination,” she said.
Australians should never be satisfied
Polio mainly affects children under the age of five, but sporadic cases continue to occur, according to the WHO, as anyone of any age who has not been vaccinated can be infected with polio. .
In September, New York ramped up its polio eradication efforts. Found in wastewater.
After the first polio case in the United States was confirmed in July in Rockland County, north of the city, officials began checking there for signs of the virus.
Confirmed in unvaccinated young adults.
While the statewide polio coverage is 79%, Rockland’s rate is lower, and New York health officials are urging all unvaccinated residents, including children two months of age and older, to immediately I urge you to get vaccinated.
Dicky Budiman, an Indonesian epidemiologist at Griffith University in Australia, said the polio discovery in Aceh had to be taken seriously because “the threat is real for Indonesia”.
Basic immunization coverage remains low, putting the country in the high-risk category, he said.
“This is something the government really has to pursue, because otherwise it is dangerous,” said Dr. Budiman.
Last September, New South Wales and Victoria began testing sewage for polio after polio cases recurred abroad.
Professor Michael Toole, associate principal investigator at the Barnett Institute, told the ABC News Daily Podcast in September: Polio epidemic in Australia ‘moderate but plausible risk’.
Professor Toole said vaccination coverage in Australia today was “quite high, at 90-95%, but of course there are areas where coverage is lower.”
Despite the generally high vaccination rates, Australians should not be complacent about the risks, he said.The strain that paralyzed patients in New York was found in sewage samples taken in both London and Israel genetically related.
According to WHO’s Global Polio Eradication Initiative, new polio cases were detected in Afghanistan, Algeria, Chad, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ethiopia and Nigeria last week.
Polio is believed to be endemic in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
ABC/AP
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