Confusion About Vaccines Is The Historical Heritage Of This Nation

Illustration of Colonial medicine (Commons Wikimedia)

JAKARTA - The World Health Organization (WHO) has classified many people's doubts about the use of vaccines as the ten biggest threats to global health in 2019. This means that doubts about the use of vaccines are as dangerous as HIV AIDS, air pollution, and dengue fever.

In Indonesia, this doubt is quite big. Some of the objections were made in protest at pharmaceutical companies. Others consider vaccines to be unnatural or their halalness is doubtful. Doubts about the true use of vaccines have been around for a long time. Turning back to when Jakarta was still Batavia and Indonesia was still called the Dutch East Indies, anti-vaccine signs have emerged.

At that time, the smallpox epidemic emerged as one of the most deadly diseases. Uniquely, most of those who reject it are not only natives, but also people of European descent or mixed descent (mestizo). When he entered Batavia in 1644, smallpox was a very frightening specter. I was so foreign, residents considered smallpox the act of spirits.

It is natural indeed. The reason was, at that time only a few people could survive the attack of smallpox, although some groups such as slaves from Bugis and Bali had a stronger immune system than slaves from Nias. "Nias is exposed to smallpox less frequently than Bali and Bugis so it has a lower immune power," said Peter Boomgard in "Smallpox, Vaccination, and the Pax Neerlandica".

In more detail, Iksaka Banu in a collection of short stories poured into a book entitled "Tea and the Betrayer" explains how variola - the virus that causes smallpox - in the 14th century appeared like an angel of death. He described the story in a short story entitled Variona. At that time, Bali, Ternate and Ambon were the areas most frequently hit by deaths from smallpox. In Bali alone, the death toll reached 18 thousand, as of the end of 1871.

Illustration of Colonial medicine (Commons Wikimedia) Caption

Vaccine questions

At that time, the only way to get rid of the plague was to send a vaccine from the Netherlands. However, of course that step takes a lot of time. The rate of spread of the plague in Bali is too fast.

Finally, vaccines were produced in a number of areas of the Dutch East Indies, from Madiun, Kedu, to Kediri. However, again, these efforts were unable to cope with the spread of the outbreak. Finally, a solution was taken. The authorities are looking for orphans in Batavia to be sent to Bali.

The vaccine is injected into the child's body and then harvested for many people in Bali. This move was immediately rejected by the orphanage. "Do you realize that here the master is actually trying to interfere in God's business?" narrated on page 51 of the book.

Regarding all the resistance to vaccines, Jean Gelman Taylor in the book "Social Life in Batavia" tells how vaccines are considered as resistance to ancient medicine. "Immunization against smallpox is a resistance to Indonesian medicine and mestizo that combines healing with magical spiritual things," he wrote.

The founder of the Piprim Hospital Vaccine Hospital, Basarah Yanuarso, said that vaccination is a method of preventing disease. He also expressed his views regarding the anti-vaccine movement.

"The call for anti-vaccines can cause outbreaks to appear everywhere. If these troubled parents make up 40 percent of the epidemic population, they can bounce back," he was quoted as saying by Detik.com, Monday, January 13.

Even so, there are still many questions regarding the use of vaccines. For example, the legal basis for ensuring the safety of vaccines. To date, there is no regulation or law that stipulates that the authorities will guarantee a number of steps when vaccination causes certain medical problems to a person.

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In addition, about the detailed content in vaccines, for example. Until now, the detailed content of the vaccine is still a question. This is related to the clarity of halal and haram use of vaccines. For the majority Muslim population, the authority must be able to guarantee halal.

So far, the only halal and haram vaccines we can learn from are the controversies that have arisen regarding the measles rubella (MR) vaccine. At that time, the Fatwa Commission of the Indonesian Ulema Council (MUI) issued fatwa number 33 of 2018 concerning the Use of Measles Rubella (MR) Vaccine from the Serum Institute of India (SII) for Immunization.

The head of the MUI Fatwa Commission, Professor Hasanuddin AF, clearly said that the MR vaccine contains haram elements because in the production process it uses ingredients derived from pigs. However, at that time the MUI Fatwa Commission allowed the use of the MR vaccine on the grounds of an emergency syar'iyyah because there had not been found an MR vaccine that was halal and holy. This reason, at the same time gave rise to confusion. This is because subjectivity plays a big role in determining the conditions of compulsion and emergency syar'iyyah.