Muslim refusal to vaccinate raises diphtheria fears in Aceh and West Sumatra
Jakarta (AsiaNews) – An outbreak of diphtheria has hit the provinces of Aceh and West Sumatra, on the island of Sumatra.
In Padang, the capital of West Sumatra, where a state of emergency has been declared, 62 people are suspected to have contracted the inflection. Six are known to have it whilst two have died. In Banda Aceh, the capital of Aceh province, 16 people have been infected and two have died.
The Indonesian Paediatric Association (Ikatan Dokter Anak Indonesia or IDAI) said that the cause of the spread of the disease is religious. The two provinces are strongly Muslim, and residents have opposed vaccination for decades.
“There has been especially strong opposition to vaccination since 2012,” said IDAI secretary Piprim Basarah Yanuarso. “Among Muslims, some people think that vaccination is part of a Jewish conspiracy, and that it is haram (forbidden).”
"When we went to Padang during the outbreak of the epidemic, the local health agency told us of growing opposition to vaccination,” he noted.
“People here think that the vaccine is haram after having heard someone saying so in a mosque. In very religious regions, such rumours have had a great negative impact on immunisation."
Data from the West Sumatra Health Agency show that 93 per cent of the population was vaccinated in 1992. This was down to 35 per cent in 2013. According to IDAI data, only two out of ten mothers get their children immunised in Aceh province.
Like polio, diphtheria was successfully eradicated in the country. In fact, the number of diphtheria cases dropped in Indonesia from 432 in 2006 to 394 in 2014 (75 per cent of them children). However, “as the level of immunisation drops from 80 to 60 per cent, chances for an outbreak will go up, like in Padang and Aceh," Piprim explained.
H M Subuh, the Health Ministry’s director general for Disease Control and Environmental Health, called for less emphasis on religion.
"People should give priority to their own safety and that of their children rather than get bogged down over whether the vaccine is halal or haram," he said. In Islam, halal refers to what is religiously lawful, and haram to what is religiously unlawful.
In the past, Islamic religious authorities have issued religious bans on vaccines. In 2008, the Indonesian Ulema Council (Majelis Ulama Indonesia or MUI) banned a vaccine against meningitis by GlaxoSmithKline because it contained pig enzymes.
In 2010, the MUI defended its fatwa, declaring that two other brands of the meningitis vaccine were halal, ignoring experts’ opinion that no vaccines can be pig-free.
MUI president Din Syamsuddin backed the fatwa, saying that "the Ulema Council has dealt with these problems for a long time. We expect vaccines with ingredients derived from pigs to be no longer used, except in an emergency."
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