Jakarta, Indonesia – Parents and children lined up Tuesday across Indonesia in a polio vaccination drive targeting 24 million youngsters, but health workers said some could be missed amid unfounded fears that the vaccine is unsafe or violates Islamic law.
Polio has sickened 225 children since the virus reappeared in mostly Muslim Indonesia in March for the first time in 10 years.
Tuesday’s operation was the latest effort in a six-month campaign to stamp it out.
“The preparation was good and certainly at this stage, there are encouraging signs that the first national immunization day was a success,” UNICEF’s David Hipgrave said. “There was good media coverage and good public perception of the need for vaccination.”
Scattered reports from Jakarta showed that turnout was high, but Hipgrave said the actual level of participation nationwide won’t be known for days.
The country’s two largest Muslim organizations endorsed the campaign, and busloads of celebrities and politicians were sent out to convince a skeptical public that the vaccinations are safe.
Rumors have spread that vaccinations led to the deaths of four children and violate Islamic law, similar to whisperings that spread through Nigeria during a polio outbreak there in 2003.
The $24 million campaign had the feel of a general election: More than 750,000 health workers fanned out across the sprawling archipelago at 245,000 posts set up at health clinics, bus depots, rail stations and airports.
The army and police were helping deliver vaccine – by plane, boat, bicycle and foot – to some of Indonesia’s 6,000 inhabited islands.
President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono’s wife administered drops to children at one makeshift health center in Jakarta. The mood was festive, with balloons and music, as parents with children on their hips jostled for space alongside youngsters in bright yellow school uniforms.
“People should not be afraid,” Kristiani Yudhoyono said. “We are doing this for the sake of the children, for the sake of the next generation.”
But some mothers said they had no plans to immunize their toddlers. Officials with the U.N. children’s agency worried that more parents would be dissuaded by a TV report that wrongly said sick children could not be vaccinated.
“The biggest problem right now is confusion over whether sick children can be vaccinated,” said UNICEF’s Claire Hajaj, who works on the U.N. agency’s global campaign to eradicate polio in six countries where it is endemic and 17 others, including Indonesia, that have recently been re-infected.
“If it isn’t decisively addressed, you’re going to continue to miss children … and it could have catastrophic consequences,” she said.
Hours after the campaign kicked off, parents enthusiastically held up their children’s hands, with red dots on their pinkies showing that they’d been vaccinated.
Children in the remote jungles of Papua received the vaccine, as did those living in tent camps in the tsunami-devastated Aceh province. In Sepadan, a village 25 miles west of Jakarta, Murtina said she was happy to take part in the campaign.
“I’ve seen children on television with polio,” said the mother of three, who uses only one name. “I don’t want my daughter to suffer like that.” But a few mothers said false media reports convinced them the vaccinations could put their children at risk. Nearly 1 million children were missed in the June campaign because of unfounded reports that children had died after taking the vaccine.
Similar rumors circulated in Nigeria two years ago, where polio vaccinations were suspended for several months after radical Islamic preachers told parents they believed the immunizations were part of a U.S. plot against Muslims.
Darnellis, a 35-year-old tailor, said she had no plans to immunize her three children in part.
“My husband prohibits it,” she said from her cluttered one-room house in the low-income neighborhood of Tanah Abang.
“We’ve heard reports on television about some children getting sick.” “We never got the vaccine,” she added. “And we’re safe. So why do they need it?” Authorities on Wednesday will begin house-to-house searches for children missed by the campaign, especially in areas where the crippling disease has been reported or turnout has been historically low.
A second round will follow Sept. 27.
The World Health Organization is worried the virus could spread to other parts of Southeast Asia and turn into an epidemic if it isn’t stopped by the rainy season, which begins in October.
“Papua New Guinea, Thailand, Malaysia are a concern. China is a concern,” said Georg Petersen, WHO’s representative in Indonesia.
“In all these countries, there are areas where the immunization coverage is not good.” Polio spreads when unvaccinated people come into contact with the feces of those with the virus, often through contaminated water in places with poor hygiene or inadequate sewage systems.
It attacks the nervous system in young children, causing paralysis, muscular atrophy and sometimes death. Only about one in 200 of those infected ever develops symptoms.
