Vaccine Review Meets With Irritation, Questions of What Supari Isn’t Saying

The Jakarta Globe, Dessy Sagita, March 26, 2009

Doctors on Thursday criticized and questioned the health minister for her decision to review a number of discretionary vaccines that she said had not scientifically been proven beneficial.

Soedjatmiko, chairman of the Indonesian Pediatrics Association, told the Jakarta Globe that Siti Fadillah Supari had created unnecessary alarm by announcing the plan before the ministry could provide any reason for doing so.

“It would be better if she kept things confidential until her cause for worry was clear, especially on such a sensitive matter,” he said, adding that even though the vaccines were excluded from the government’s list of mandatory vaccinations for children, they had been proven beneficial and were widely used in neighboring countries, including Singapore, Thailand and the Philippines.

“Do you really think all those countries would use these vaccines if they weren’t beneficial?”

Soedjatmiko said that if the government deciding against making additional vaccines mandatory due to financial reasons, it should not prohibit people who were willing to pay from obtaining the vaccines.

“The diseases exist in this country, the vaccines are readily available, and if parents can afford them, why should we stop them?” he said.

Soedjatmiko also said all vaccines available in Indonesia had been tested by the Food and Drug Monitoring Agency before being made commercially available.

Sukman Tulus Putra, deputy chairman of the Indonesian Doctors Association, said the vaccines had, in fact, been scientifically proven to be beneficial, although some of the research was conducted overseas.

“But we don’t need to rely only on local research; we can consider foreign research as long as a particular country has our same standards,” he said.

“We have no problem with the ministry’s plan to review the vaccines, but please don’t prohibit them.”

However, Iskandar Sitorus, spokesman for the Legal Aid Foundation for Health, or LBH Kesehatan, said his office had found indications that some vaccines were not only not beneficial, but were even harmful for children.

Sitorus said Supari’s call for a review came years too late.

“Over the past few years, trillions of rupiah has been circulating around these possibly wasteful vaccines, and our children may be left to bear useless and possibly toxic chemical substances in their bodies,” he said.

Sitorus said the minister should have initiated a review years ago, before the use of some vaccines had become commonplace.

He also said the ministry’s decision indicated that some problems likely had been found.

“I don’t think the ministry would announce the review so suddenly if they hadn’t run into irregularities.”

Earlier this week, Supari said she would review the benefits of immunizations that aren’t currently included in the government’s official vaccination program, including vaccines for pneumonia, flu and rubella.

Supari said that in urban areas at least 11 different kinds of vaccinations were available, but that the ministry had made only four mandatory — for measles, polio, tetanus and tuberculosis.

“Those four were cleared by the WHO and were scientifically proven to be beneficial and necessary,” she said.

Of the remaining eight, she said, “Note this: I’m not saying they are dangerous, but the real question is whether or not they’re necessary. That’s why the ministry is conducting a review.”