Idlib residents wary of vaccination campaign

VACCINATION HESITATION: Hossam al-Siyar, supervisor of the Syrian National Council’s (SNC) polio vaccination campaign in the village of Marat a-Numan in the south Idlib countryside, posts a message urging parents to vaccinate their children, reported Idleb Press on Monday.

The opposition-in-exile, the SNC, launched the polio immunization campaign over the weekend in Idlib province. But it has been met with suspicion and outright rejection by a number of Idlib residents, reported the pro-opposition Al-Khata al-Akhbaria news outlet.

“I won’t subject my children to the possibility of death, which might be hidden within these vaccinations,” Munir al-Hamad, a father of two in the city of Jarjanaz in the Idlib countryside, told Syria Direct on Tuesday. 

Last September, the SNC implemented a similar campaign, the result of which at least five children died.

Ahmed al-Jarak, an SNC official in Idlib, claimed that the deaths during the previous campaign, which intended to vaccinate against measles, were caused by tampering with the medicine, reported the Idleb Press on Monday. “Immunization materials were substituted with certain types of drugs, which caused the children to die instantly,” he said.

Syria Direct reported on the failed campaign here, which the head of the vaccination program blamed on “a person connected to the regime seeking to damage the reputation of the health sector under the opposition.”

-March 3, 2015

– Photo courtesy of Idlib Press

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