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Gorontalo calls on residents to participate in polio immunization week
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For your health – Gorontalo Governor Rusli Habibie (left) administers a polio vaccine to a baby during the launch of national polio immunization week in Tapa subdistrict, Sipatana district, Gorontalo city, on Tuesday.
(thejakartapost.com/Syamsul Huda M.Suhari)
T
he Gorontalo administration has called on all residents with children aged 0-59 months to participate in national polio immunization week, which is being nationwide from March 8 until March 15.
“We are calling on all mosques to explain the importance of the immunizations for the future of our children,” Gorontalo Governor Rusli Habibie said during the launch of the event in Tapa subdistrict, Sipatana district, Gorontalo City, earlier this week.
Based on the administration’s health agency data, Gorontalo is home to 96,336 children aged 0-59 months, out of a total population of 1.1 million people. Approximately 1,396 immunization posts have been readied in subdistricts and villages.
Gorontalo Health Agency head Trianto Bialangi said children belonging to the age group were prone to polio regardless of their immunization status. He hoped that with the program, the immunity level of under 5-year-old children in the province would increase up to 95 percent.
The event is part of the country’s commitment to work with worldwide communities to achieve the total eradication of polio by the end of 2020.
“The world managed to eradicate smallpox in 1980, and now we are striving to eradicate polio by 2020,” the Health Ministry’s director for surveillance and health quarantine, Jane Soepardi, told journalists in Jakarta last week.
The World Health Assembly in 2012 stated that the spread of polio still constituted an international public health emergency and called on all countries to eradicate the highly contagious disease.
Jane said that because polio vaccines had yet to reach many pocket areas in the country, this year’s immunization week aimed to reach more than 95 percent of children under 5 years old.
“There has not been a polio case in Indonesia since 2006 and the country was declared polio-free on March 27, 2014. However, this virus can spread again to Indonesia because Afghanistan and Pakistan are not yet polio-free,” said Jane.
During this week’s event, two drops of the oral polio vaccine will be given to children aged 0-59 months regardless of their immunization status.
In April, the government will change polio vaccines from the trivalent oral polio vaccine (tOPV) to bivalent oral polio vaccine (bOPV), which is considered more effective.
In July, the government will introduce the use of the inactivated polio vaccine (IPV) administered through injections to children aged four months.
Jane said all local administrations must introduce the polio vaccination program and help prepare facilities needed so that immunization officers could reach remote areas. (ebf)
