Seminar For High School Teachers Throughout Indonesia
FMIPA UI through the Department of Biology held an online seminar (webinar) themed Vaksin dan Vaksinasi on Tuesday (26/1). This seminar is a form of community service program with the aim of making the National Covid-19 Vaccination Program a success. The vaccination program was officially started by President Joko Widodo on Wednesday (13/1), where the President of the Republic of Indonesia was the first person to be injected with the vaccine Sinovac at the State Palace.
Moderated by Dr. Ratna Yuniati, M.Si as the Education Manager of FMIPA UI, this seminar presented three speakers, namely Drs. Iman Santoso, M. Phil. who is a microbiologist and lecturer at the Department of Biology, FMIPA UI, Sabar Pambudi, Ph. D. researcher at the Agency for the Assessment and Application of Technology (BPPT), and Dr. Latri Rahmah researcher at PT. Bio Farma, and attended by 300 participants who are high school teachers throughout Indonesia.
Drs. Iman Santoso, M. Phil. in his presentation explained the meaning of vaccines and how they work. Vaccines, according to Dr. Iman, are first weakened germs, but that, said Dr. Iman, was the previous definition. Now, vaccines are defined as substances that are deliberately made to stimulate the formation of immunity from certain diseases, so that they can prevent someone from contracting certain diseases. The method of vaccination, or the act of inserting vaccines into the body can be through injection, oral, or intranasal to produce immunity to certain diseases.
Furthermore, he said that the aim of national vaccination is to awaken or stimulate the immune system in order to form herd immunity. He emphasized that the vaccine is safe, and appealed to the entire community to help make the Covid-19 vaccination program a success as a form of support for the government, as well as health workers who are fighting on the front lines to save patients from Covid-19 infection.
Meanwhile, Sabar Pambudi, PhD. in his material explained about the technology used in the development of the Covid-19 vaccine. According to him, the technology must be able to store vaccines at a temperature of -20°C, because vaccines will usually be damaged if stored at that temperature. For example, the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines, both of these vaccines are mRNA vaccines, which will be damaged if stored at the wrong temperature due to the instability of RNA.
Dr. Latri Rahmah explained the stages in research to vaccine production. He said there are eight stages in vaccine research to be used by the wider community. The first stage is exploratory or the process of identifying the antigen used, continues to the observation stage vaccine candidate design and vaccine characterization. Tahapan selanjutnya yaitu uji preclinical study which is generally tested on animals, then continued to the next stage pilot scale manufacturing.
After that, continue to the next stage. clinical development yang terbagi menjadi tiga fase (fase I, fase II, dan fase III), lalu regulatory approval which is the stage of preparing documents or data before they are produced in large quantities, and the final stage is commercial manufacturing. In addition, Latri also explained that vaccines that can be sold must have a CPOB (Good Manufacturing Practices) certificate.
This online seminar was then closed with a question and answer session by the three speakers and the participants.
