By Taskin Rahman, Senior Manager, Advocacy and Campaigns, Save the Children Asia Regional Office
Three weeks ago, Indonesia received 1.6 million doses of pneumonia vaccine. It’s a significant event for children’s survival.
In 2018, pneumonia was the cause of 19,000 child deaths in Indonesia – two children every hour. It accounts for 16% of all under-five deaths in the country.
The arrival of this batch of life-saving pneumonia vaccines signals a big step forwards in tackling this deadly disease.
The challenge of geography
If diagnosed early, most cases of childhood pneumonia can be treated easily with antibiotics. Alongside that, the use of vaccines to prevent diseases like pneumonia in an emerging economy such as Indonesia is a crucial and cost-effective approach.
However, in a country of 17,000 islands and limited transport networks in some places, reaching health facilities or drug dispensaries sometimes involves travelling by boat, bike and even horse-and-cart. Indonesia’s unique geography represents a challenge to access to essential health services, like immunisation – particularly for the country's 85 million children, one-third of the population. In addition, in some areas, acceptance of vaccination is low.
Nevertheless, as the country gradually develops better access and management capacity within its health system, there’s a strong strategic case to invest in disease prevention.
The pneumonia vaccine is a case in point. It can prevent childhood pneumonia and reduce under-five deaths from the disease by 56%. Like other vaccines, it can also improve access to health services for other illnesses. That includes freeing up hospital beds – more important than ever in this time of COVID-19 when health systems around the world have struggled to respond to the pandemic while at the same time sustaining essential health services.
Stop pneumonia
Save the Children Indonesia has been an active player in child health for decades. Over the past two years we’ve focused on tackling pneumonia. On 12 November 2019 – World Pneumonia Day – in partnership with Directors from the Ministry of Health, we launched the three-year STOP Pneumonia campaign. Last November, a year on from the launch, we joined forces with the wife of the Vice-President, the Minister of Health, the Minister of Women’s Empowerment and Child Protection, and three governors’ wives to broaden and escalate the campaign.
On the ground last year in Sumba, a remote district in Nusa Tenggara Timor province, 32 villages were allocated US$45,807 in 2020 to address childhood pneumonia. Earlier this year, our programme on integrated management of childhood illnesses was scaled up in Bandung district. In 2021, the Stop Pneumonia campaign will address immunisation in the province of West Java.
Strengthening health services is critical to tackling pneumonia. That means improving access to responsive pneumonia diagnostics, enhancing clinical management of childhood pneumonia as well a social-behavior-change campaign.
Alongside this, a widescale national rollout of the pneumonia vaccine could prevent 10,000 pneumonia-related deaths in children each year and 500,000 infections.
Vaccines work!
On 29 January 2020, at the Barcelona Pneumonia Forum, Suharso Monoarfa, Indonesia’s Minister for National Development Planning, said in his keynote address, "It gives me great pleasure today to announce that the Government of Indonesia is committed to proceeding with the special mechanism for PCV procurement through the Gavi Advance Market Commitment.”
Later in the year, an agreement was signed between the Minister of Health and UNICEF.
And on 8th of April 2021, Indonesia received 1.6 million doses of the pneumonia vaccine.
On its 100th anniversary, Save the Children promised to work with partners to tackle pneumonia globally. In Indonesia, as described above, we’ve worked in partnership with the government to make real progress. We’ve also partnered with Clinton Health Access Initiative and UNICEF. And since 2018, through large-scale public mobilization, we’ve built public and political will for the vaccine.
Vaccines have never been talked about as much as they are these days. COVID-19 vaccines dominate political priorities and public health operations. But it’s vital that attention also focused on vaccine-preventable childhood diseases, such as pneumonia.
Like all countries in the world, progress in Indonesia has not been equal in all parts of the country. As the pneumonia vaccine rollout begins, hard-to-reach areas like Nusa Tenggara Timor in southern Indonesia must not be overlooked. The vaccine must be distributed sustainably and with equity.
Vaccines work. Let’s make sure they work for every child.
Image Intan, age 4, from Sulawesi, Indonesia (name changed; photo: Hariandi Hafid / DEC)
