Jakarta Aims to Intensify Polio Vaccination: Acting Governor

TEMPO.CO, Jakarta - Acting Governor of Jakarta Heru Budi Hartono stated that he would intensify polio vaccination in the capital city after the Health Ministry stated that Indonesia has a high risk of an extraordinary event (KLB) in polio cases.

"We have to be aggressive. Later the Health Service will have programs for all vaccinations, until next year," he said on Sunday.

However, he did not provide details on the number of children in Jakarta who will receive the polio vaccination.

The Jakarta Provincial Government is also intensively carrying out immunizations through the National Child Immunization Month (BIAN) for children aged nine months to 59 months.

The immunizations given are measles, rubella vaccine, polio vaccines, either by injection or drops, and pentavalent vaccine.

Based on data from Jakarta Health Service as of August 31 2022, as many as 648,037 or 90 percent of children aged 9-59 months in Jakarta have received the additional measles-rubella vaccine.

This achievement put Jakarta Province in first place for the additional measles-rubella immunization coverage in BIAN.

BIAN in Jakarta is carried out in all health centers or vaccine posts in the capital city which are given free for all recipients.

Meanwhile, the Health Ministry's Director General of Disease Prevention and Control (P2P) Maxi Rein Rondonuwu  said that 30 provinces and 415 districts/cities in Indonesia have a high risk of polio outbreaks due to low immunization coverage.

He explained that polio immunization in Indonesia currently uses the type of polio drops or bivalent oral polio vaccine (OPV).

The vaccine to prevent poliovirus types one and two is given for a period of four times per four months orally.

The administration of the vaccine is combined with the Inactive Polio Vaccine (IPV) in injection preparations. Babies aged nine months will also be given a booster vaccine along with the administration of the measles or rubella vaccine.

However, the coverage of oral and injectable vaccinations was still low. In 2020, the coverage of oral polio vaccination was 86.8 percent and injection was at 37.7 percent.

Meanwhile, in 2021 the percentage of coverage decreased to 80.2 percent and injection to 66.2 percent.

Recently, the Ministry of Health found one case of polio in Aceh in November 2022 which was affected by the non-running of both oral and injectable polio vaccinations for four consecutive years in the districts and cities of Aceh Province.

ANTARA

Click here to get the latest news updates from Tempo on Google News