The Ministry of Health has urged local governments to expedite the coverage for basic immunization for toddlers and school-aged children.

Data as of October 2021 showed that the national basic immunization coverage had only reached 58.4 percent.

Acting Director-General of Disease Prevention and Control of the Health Ministry, Maxi Rein Rondonuwu, drew attention to a gap between several provinces with basic immunization rate above 60 percent and other provinces with immunization rates that had not reached 60 percent.

“There is an immunization gap in several provinces. If we look at it, several provinces, such as Banten, deserve to be lauded since even during a pandemic, they are able to reach 78.8 percent, slightly higher than the national target,” Rondonuwu stated at an online press conference monitored here on Tuesday.

Other provinces with basic immunization coverage above 60 percent are South Sulawesi, Bengkulu, South Sumatra, Bali, Gorontalo, Lampung, Bangka Belitung, East Java, and Jambi.

“This achievement should be a lesson for other provinces to expedite their immunization coverage and meet the national standard,” he added.

Rondonuwu explained that the impact of low and uneven immunization coverage in several areas would lead to an accumulation of populations prone to diseases that could actually be prevented by immunization.

In a worst-case scenarios, there will be an extraordinary outbreak (KLB) of disease from virus or bacterial infections that causes diseases, such as diphtheria or measles and rubella.

Rondonuwu has encouraged each region in Indonesia to increase its immunization coverage since the national immunization program is also implemented by local governments, starting from the village or sub-district level and up to the districts and cities.

He noted that currently, outbreaks of diphtheria, measles, and rubella had emerged in several regions of Indonesia. The emergence of outbreaks of this long-lost disease was due to the decline in immunization coverage in 2020 and 2021 owing to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Source: Antara News