THE Health Ministry is studying proposals to make vaccination compulsory, following the death of a 2-year-old boy from diphtheria in Johor Baru on Feb 21.
The boy had never been immunised. Five children, who were in contact with the victim, were confirmed positive for diphtheria and quarantined at Sultanah Aminah Hospital.
Reluctance to vaccinate is regarded by the World Health Organisation as one of the top 10 threats to global health this year.
To paraphrase this statement, our view towards vaccines is as critical as the epidemics themselves.
It is torturous for the doctor and mother alike to oversee an otherwise happy child bursting into tears at being jabbed by a needle during vaccination.
It is hoped that medical scientists would formulate oral vaccines, like polio drops equivalent to vaccination injections, to obviate the need to needle them.
Medical research has established that those who exercise religious or make philosophical abstentions are at a greater risk of contracting infections, which put themselves and their communities at risk.
As a result, medical health advocates are led into a battle to balance the ethics of protecting individual beliefs and the community’s health.
However, the strategy of maintaining a voluntary immunisation system, educating parents about the benefits of vaccination and dispelling “myths” about the dangers of vaccination appears misguided.
People are not as rational as we like to think they are as it is much easier for anti-vaxxers, as they are called, to frighten than to enlighten them.
Malaysia, as a signatory to the Convention on the Rights of the Child, is obliged to give children the best healthcare and education there is.
Failure to vaccinate is tantamount to child abuse on the part of parents.
Vaccination against 12 critical diseases, including measles, diptheria, mumps, Hepatitis B, pertussis, polio and tuberculosis, should be made mandatory while the rest optional.
When parents don’t want to protect their children, the government must to do so.
But the penalty for avoidance should not be “no jab, no school”.
The possibility of allowing only vaccinated children to enrol in schools is against the child’s interest and should not even be considered.
If anything, fines of, say, up to RM500 may be imposed on the first offending anti-vaxxer, doubling on the next or subsequent offence.
Special circumstances like allergy to vaccines may be considered for exemptions from penalty.
DR A. SOORIAN
Seremban, Negri Sembilan