Controversial minister wants to review vaccinations
Zakki Hakim , The Associated Press , Jakarta | Wed, 03/25/2009 2:46 PM | National
Indonesia’s controversial health minister says she wants to end vaccinating children against meningitis, mumps and some other diseases because she fears foreign drug companies are using the country as a testing ground.
Health Minister Siti Fadillah Supari – who first drew widespread attention by boycotting the World Health Organization’s 50-year-old virus sharing system in 2007 – said Tuesday she wanted “scientific proof” that shots for illnesses like pneumonia, chicken pox, the flu, rubella and typhoid were “beneficial”.
“If not, they have to be stopped,” she said, declining to say exactly what that would mean. “We don’t want our country to be a testing place for drugs, as has been the case in Africa.”
Supari said she still would advocate immunizations against measles, polio, tetanus, hepatitis B and tuberculosis.
Well, she may be worried about the controversies on the hazards that’s been ongoing. Here’s one of the latest findings http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/580027. Medical line may not be perfect, but improvements are ongoing and well, having said that, like any other thing in this world, there will always be bias-ness in R&D. When lots of money is involved, sometimes human ethics and integrity have higher chances of being broken.
To answer your question there is an election process. Unfortunately there is no guarantee that Ibu Supari won’t still be health minister when the next government eventually is formed. Funny how issues like this don’t become planks in an electoral platform.