Vaccinations during early childhood are essential to preventing children from being infected by a wide variety of dangerous diseases. Yet it appears there are some people in South Tangerang so depraved that they were willing to deprive children of proper vaccines in order to make a profit for themselves.
The National Police Crime Investigations Unit (Bareskrim) on Tuesday arrested nine people who allegedly operated a factory producing fake vaccines in the Pondok Aren district of South Tangerang.
“The factory produced fake vaccines including those for measles, polio, hepatitis B, tetanus, and BCG,” said Brigadier General Agung Setya, director of Bareskrim’s Special Economic Crimes unit, as quoted by Detik yesterday.
Agung added that the nine suspects mixed gentamicin antibiotics with intravenous therapy fluids and put them in vials. The vials were then packaged in a way to closely resemble real vaccines.
The Investigation into the case is still ongoing and police have not yet revealed any further details, such as how many (if any) of the fake vaccines have already been distributed to the public.
In light of the arrests, the Indonesian Food and Drug Monitoring Agency (BPOM) urged the public to ask their vaccine giving healthcare professionals about the distributor of their vaccines. The vaccines are less likely to be fake if they were officially distributed by renowned pharmaceutical firms in the country.
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