Before the pandemic, Mamik Nariati’s five grandchildren were given free immunisations for diseases like polio, mumps and Hepatitis B at their school in the city of Surabaya in East Java.
“But since the online school started last year, there is no more immunisation programme,” she told Al Jazeera.
Sarigita Andika Wati, a mother of three in the Balinese regency of Tabanan, has a similar story: “My kids can’t go to school so they couldn’t get the free immunisations.”
The youngsters are among 800,000 Indonesian children who missed out on routine vaccinations last year due to pandemic service disruptions – a jump of 40 percent compared with the previous year – according to data compiled by the World Health Organization (WHO) and UNICEF.
Coronavirus: Children dying at an alarming rate in Indonesia as COVID surges
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No longer hidden victims, children are dying as virus surges in Indonesia
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