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Ulema council to help ensure successful polio immunization week in Klaten
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Get ready: Children at the Teratai early childhood education center (PAUD) in East Pontianak, West Kalimantan, listen attentively to their teacher. They are ready to get polio vaccines during the celebration of National Polio Immunization Week, which will start on March 8 simultaneously across the country.
(thejakartapost.com/Severianus Endi)
T
he Klaten Health Agency is set to involve the Indonesian Ulema Council (MUI) to ensure the successful implementation of national polio immunization week in the regency, which will be held on March 8 to 15.
The health agency considers it necessary for the Klaten administration to involve religious authorities as it aims to vaccinate 95 percent of children aged 5 years old and under in the regency.
The country received a polio-free certificate from the WHO in 2014 and the government aims for the country to enter the polio eradication stage by 2020.
Acting health agency head Cahyono Widodo said the agency depended very much on the MUI in introducing the polio vaccination program to people in the regency as many of them still held a strong belief that polio vaccines contained haram ingredients.
“We hope that the percentage of parents who resist having their children vaccinated decreases,” said Cahyo.
The number of under 5-year-old children targeted to receive polio vaccines during immunization week in Klaten is 85,394. The health agency is set to deploy 9,032 health officers to deliver polio vaccines in 401 villages in 26 districts across Klaten regency.
The Klaten Health Agency is certain that the regency is already polio free and is in the polio elimination stage. It is also optimistic that the government’s target for immunization week will be achieved. The health agency’s head of disease prevention and control, Herry Martanta, asserted that there had been no polio cases in the regency since 2006.
“We have asked all people to report to health workers or health centers if their under 5-year-old children have polio symptoms, such as paralysis,” said Herry.
He said it had also called on health workers deployed by the health agency to areas across the regency to report children with polio symptoms. (ebf)
