PETALING JAYA, June 27 — Vaccinations for children should be made mandatory, said child rights activists.
They said parents opposed to the vaccination need to open their eyes to the issue at hand, the health and well-being of their children, rather than be taken for a ride by pseudo-scientific claims that vaccines were harmful.
Voice of the Children vice-president, Hartini Zainudin, said it was unacceptable that some parents had chosen not to vaccinate their children on religious grounds.
“As a concerned mother and as someone who believes in the health and well-being of children, it is intolerable that those children lost their lives due to such ignorance in this day and age,” she said in reference to two recent cases of preventable deaths from diphtheria.
Hartini said there should be no compromise on the right of a child to healthcare and that stricter measures should be in place to ensure children got their vaccines.
“There should be no picking and choosing with the health of children. Unless a vaccine has been proven beyond doubt to be harmful there should be no reason to avoid vaccinations,” she said, adding there was no religious basis for rejecting vaccines.
She also said vaccinations were a matter of public health and those speaking against vaccinations should look at the big picture instead of making unproven claims.
“This is a serious issue. Several countries have made it mandatory for children to get vaccinated, failing which they will be barred from enrolment in public schools,” said Hartini.
“I do not understand how parents can be so irresponsible and neglectful. What if children without vaccinations carry a communicable disease and spread it to their schoolmates?”
A seven-year-old girl died last Saturday in Malacca from diphtheria, a potentially fatal and highly contagious bacterial infection that can be prevented by immunisation, while a two-year-old boy died from the disease on Wednesday in Kedah.
The cases have reignited a debate on vaccinations in Malaysia, with large numbers of parents not vaccinating their children due to religious sentiment and conspiracy theories promoted by uninformed individuals.
Parent Action Group for Education chairman Datin Noor Azimah Abdul Rahim said mandatory vaccinations could have positive results but there needed to be a balance.
“Education is the key. There needs to be a concerted effort to address the concerns of parents otherwise there may be even more resistance.
“Children need to be vaccinated but this needs to be shown not forced upon people,” she said.
Noor Azimah urged parents to make informed decisions and rely on credible sources and not those who were guided by religious misconceptions.
