Fear of side effects, and whether it’s ‘halal’ dissuade some parents from vaccinating their children

By Mohani Niza

There have been debates worldwide about whether vaccinations are safe, with some claiming that it causes autism. The debate happens here as well, but with a twist: some parents have adamantly been against vaccinating their children out of fear that the vaccines are not ‘halal’ (permissible within Islam).

28 year-old medical officer Zainina binti Zainal Abidin who works at the Malaysian Health Ministry witnessed this phenomenon while she was rotating in the paediatric ward (Zainina is a mother herself, and has vaccinated her daughter Addeena Auni, 8 months old, up to 6 months).

“I had a few fair share of parents opting against vaccination. That was about 1 year ago. I recall counselling them, but they still insisted no. I respected their choice, took a signature as a consented refusal from the parents and that was it. The issue at the time was the questionable halal vaccines. Our guidelines were written to protect the whole community at large,” she said.

The effects of such attitude is heart breaking.

“You really wish you don’t see them,” she said of babies dying from otherwise preventable illnesses, and denounces some parents’ claim of a pharmaceutical conspiracy.

In 2003, political and religious leaders in three Nigerian states boycotted a WHO polio vaccination campaign, claiming that the vaccine caused sterility and AIDS. Similarly, certain Hindu and Muslim groups in India have long held the belief that vaccination is a covert method of family planning, primarily targeting Muslims.

But how true are such claims?

Dr Khoo Yoong Khean, a Malaysian medical doctor who wrote to news portal The Malaysian Insider about this phenomenon, blames it to misleading articles posted on websites and social media networks.

And it worries him.

“As a medical doctor, this is very worrying. I strongly feel that this needs to be addressed before more parents make the wrong decision and endanger the life of their children.” he wrote.

“Despite many research stating that vaccines are safe, there are still people who believe that vaccination causes harm to children and even more preposterous, a conspiracy of the Jews. Vaccines are created as early as 1930s and have been used globally to prevent many serious diseases,” he added.

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), childhood immunization protects children from major diseases.

“Childhood vaccination prevents 2 million deaths per year worldwide and is widely considered to be ‘overwhelmingly good’ by the scientific community,” it stated further.

WHO also states that parents’ knowledge and attitude towards vaccination have a huge influence on whether young ones are vaccinated.

And equipping parents with knowledge and changing their attitudes towards vaccination is something that Zainina has been doing – though sometimes to no avail.

“Although we respect their values, as a healthcare worker I have a responsibility of educating them on the matter, although most of the time they have shut their minds out before we begin to start counselling,” she said.

“As a doctor I often counselled them not to believe 100% what they are reading. A salesman will tell whatever they need to sell, often things that we want to hear. Weighing pros and cons, herd immunity is extremely vital to ward off any epidemics that we have once thought to be eradicated from Malaysia or some, eradicated from this world. We are slowly hearing isolated cases from places where there has been active movement of anti-vaccination,” Zainina added.

But what about claims that some of the vaccines contain pork, a no-no within the Islamic community?

Zainina explains:

“One of the porcine-containing vaccines is the rotavirus vaccine (RotateQ) , which is not made compulsory. Meningococcal vaccine that we use in Malaysia is Mencevax brand which has no porcine derivatives. The confusion comes in because there is also Monumen brand of [the] meningococcal vaccine which is said to have porcine particles,” she explained, all at once debunking myths surrounding vaccination.