ANTI-VACCINATION campaigns and mothers opting to give birth at home are causing years of work in public health to go to waste, said Dr Siti Hasmah Ali.

“My years of teaching rural mothers to go to the hospital for delivery, especially their first delivery, have gone to waste. 

“The immunisation programme, where it benefits the children, has gone to waste because of the anti-immunisation campaign and mothers not going to hospitals (to give birth),” said Dr Siti Hasmah, a trained physician and wife to Pakatan Harapan chairman Dr Mahathir Mohamad.

Speaking at a Facebook Live broadcast titled “Insight Talk: Independent woman, an old wives’ tale?”, she said research showed that vaccines were not dangerous. 

“It has been investigated and researched for many, many years and it is not dangerous. Of course, when a vaccine is given to a child, he (or she) will develop a fever. We adults will also have that. It is a reaction,” said Dr Siti Hasmah who spent many years as a medical officer in the maternity and children’s wards in Kedah. 

She also refuted the notion that Islam forbade vaccinations. 

“They said some ingredients were (considered) haram in Islam. It is not so. It is from sheep. Why can’t we think of the positive?  It is to help children live.” 

She said parents must not wait until the child was stricken with a disease like polio before seeking treatment or immunisation as it would be too late then.

She recalled a case in Kedah of a 15-year-old boy afflicted with polio who had to be put in an iron lung, the device used to treat polio then. 

 “We have eliminated polio with BCG shots. We have also eradicated malaria. I saw all these (diseases).

 “But now, I am so sad. Why are we going backwards? It is not Islamic at all to go backwards when you are given the chance to have all these treatments to live longer,” said Dr Siti Hasmah, urging anti-vaccine campaigners to rethink their cause. 

She also cautioned women against giving birth to their first and their fourth babies at home unattended as complications could arise. 

“You must have someone like your husband or nurse to help,” she said, when talking about the rise of water birthing in Malaysia. 

Dr Siti Hasmah said there were many success stories in Malaysian healthcare, especially in rural health. Malaysia has the fourth highest reduction of infant mortality rates, after  Japan, Britain, and the United States.

She said prior to independence, about 75,000 children under a year old would die each year because of diphtheria, but by the time she left the civil service, that number had dwindled significantly due to better healthcare.

The key to the success was immunisation and registering the village midwives to ensure cooperation between trained and traditional midwives.

On the issue of child marriage, Dr Siti Hasmah said it was not healthy for children to become mothers.

“The child’s body is not mature enough to accommodate pregnancy, and she herself is not mature enough to deal with the baby.

“She would not be a good parent. Not a mature parent. I won’t go along with child marriage.” – October 6, 2017.