Usually, in the issue of vaccination, we usually talk about the immunisations which are given to the children and with the consent of their parents. The parents are the main aspect in the life of a child and all that is related to their child’s life even the child’s inoculation. To resolve the issue of anti-vaccination or vaccine hesitancy among Malaysian parents, there must be a way to communicate with the parents about the importance of vaccination.
As stated earlier, one major contributing factor to vaccine hesitancy is parents’ misconception and their concerns about the side effects of vaccines. The government plays an important role in order to overcome this problem by introducing and exposing the parents about vaccination process. It can be done in many ways such as campaigns and talks about immunisation. These parents need to know that by letting their children unvaccinated, the consequences of it are higher than the side effects. They may lose their children if the vaccine-preventable diseases attack their unvaccinated children as we can see happened in the case of diphtheria where two of the children died because both of them were not vaccinated.
Other than that, they also need to know that the statistics for their children to suffer the side effects of vaccination are very rare and until now there is no experiments or studies conducted that can link vaccination to autism. It is common for the parents to find the best way to protect their children and by informing them about the process of vaccination, they can evaluate the benefits of vaccination towards their children and the effects if they do not immunise their children with it. Studies have shown that by improving the parent’s knowledge regarding vaccines, this will improve immunisation status and affects the success of immunisation programme (Awadh et al., 2014).
On top of that, some of the parents in Malaysia stated that the vaccines consist of prohibited substances such as the pig’s DNA and this is one of the reasons for them to avoid their children from getting vaccinated. The government especially the Malaysian Islamic Development Department (JAKIM) needs to plan an initiative to explain to the public especially Muslim individuals and parents that the vaccinations are allowed to use even though some of them might contain prohibited ingredients because these vaccines can save the lives of their children and others. As stated by the Islamic Medical Association of Malaysia president, Datuk Dr Abdul Abdul Rahim Mohamad, vaccines work as preventive measures which are recognised and practiced by thousands of Muslim doctors who were experts, reliable and trustworthy around the globe. He continued his statement by saying that, “It is shallow thinking to consider this group of professionals is influenced by conspiracies of the enemies of Islam or that they are unaware of the halal or haram status of the vaccines when they give them to their patients.” (Malay Mail Online, 2016).
Moreover, the government should enforce the law by mandating some of the vaccines to be taken before they are admitted to schools which can protect the children from the fatal diseases such as diphtheria and measles. For now, there is still no law that mandates the parents to provide immunisations for their children before they are admitted to schools which can be said that some of the parents might get their children’s lives on risks in their early childhood. We all know that at the age of two years old and above, the children do not receive any more vaccinations from their mothers which make them vulnerable to be infected with these fatal diseases. This issue had been discussed a lot of time by the government but usually end up with resistance by many parties such as the people in Malaysia itself (The Star Online, 2019). For now, the doctors in Malaysia are urging the government to mandate two important vaccines for infants which are diphtheria and measles vaccines due to the implications which can be caused by these illnesses. Moreover, the government also provides free vaccines for Malaysian people to encourage them to receive the vaccinations and promotes better health among Malaysians.
This is my first time that I get an individual assignment which I was told to complete for 12 to 15 pages. I was shocked actually and I thought that it was impossible for me to complete this assignment. Commonly, assignment like this was done in groups and I am used to write long-written report when I was furthering my study in foundation of science at UiTM Dengkil with my group which made me felt a bit burdened with this assignment and realized that my time in UTM will be hectic. To add to this nonsense, I also found out that I need to prepare power point slides which summarize my written assignment. Well, this make me feel more stressed out when I know this in the first week, I was in UTM.
When I was told to choose my current issue, I was thinking about two issues which were anti-vaccination and gaming disorder. At first, I chose anti-vaccination because I love to find out about this issue and to learn more about it. Then, I changed my mind that I want to do gaming disorder due to insufficient information and materials for anti-vaccination. I did not know how gaming disorder issue can come to my mind but I thought maybe due to the reading I had done during the holiday while I waited to continue my study in UTM. I read a book about cyberpsychology which gave me the insights of how a cyber forensic psychologist do her works and in that book, I learned about gaming disorder and other things that related to psychology and cyber. Lastly, I changed my topic again to anti-vaccination because I was so interested in anti-vaccination issue and I made up my mind that no matter what, I wanted to do the assignment on this issue.
Then, my journey began. I did a lot of searching for articles, newspapers and academic text reference that related to my topic. To be honest, it felt like forever since the last day I wrote anything that is long and needs a lot of reading. I used to help my mother as a research assistant and I knew the things that I needed to do. I already knew where to find my articles but it was still difficult for me to start writing about it. Then, this one fine day, I decided that I need to start typing the letters on my keyboard to produce the words for my sentences on this issue. From there, I started to do what I was supposed to do and I started analysing all the information that I got from the articles and the newspapers.
In the first week, I already involved in many activities outside the classroom. I joined a bicycle tour, sharing programmes and I was already involved with a club. Week by week, I got busier because I love to join a lot of programmes such as mandarin class and I have my own responsibilities towards my clubs. Besides, I also work part-time in online business and there were moments which I needed to use my time to promote the products that I sold on my social media accounts. I will not lie that these commitments had interfered my time to finish this assignment because there were times that I needed to go out for meetings and activities related to them. Even though these made my life a bit chaotic but I knew that all of these help me to learn ways to spend my time wisely and organize it accordingly. This had brought my memory to one of the lectures for this subject which discussed the topic of adaptability. In this class, we learned that we need to adapt with our surrounding to be comfortable with it. Thus, this class had taught me that I need to learn how to adapt with my current situations.
Furthermore, I had gained new knowledge by writing this assignment. I understand more about anti-vaccination, how it was started, what is the effect of it and so much more. Next, I also learn to analyse and synthesize the information that I got from my reading which I incorporated in this individual assignment. On the other hand, I also learned to organize my findings so I will not get confused with all the information that I got. I hope that the knowledge that I have got by doing this assignment will help me to do better in future assignment and work that I will get.
In conclusion, anti-vaccination is a rising problem for the whole world especially in Malaysia. It can be seen now that this issue is becoming a problem that needs to be eliminated in Malaysia based on the rising statistics of vaccine-preventable diseases and the comeback of eliminated diseases in Malaysia such as tuberculosis (TB) which has resurface in Malaysia recently (Malay Mail Online, 2019). In this year alone, we can see that the number of cases related to vaccine-preventable diseases in Malaysia have risen tremendously and all of us should start to play our roles to understand the process of vaccination. I hope that all of us will have the curiosity and the determination to understand more about vaccination to avoid us from ruining the lives of our children and our next generations. Moreover, we need to be more concerned with the information we got and not to be someone who does not investigates everything that he or she has listens or reads. Lastly, we need to remember that prevention is better than cure.