The National / August 16, 2024
Gaza’s Health Ministry declared a polio epidemic in the Palestinian enclave last month, blaming Israel’s ongoing military offensive.
UN Secretary General António Guterres on Friday called for the warring parties in Gaza to guarantee humanitarian pauses in the fighting so a polio vaccine campaign can be conducted.
“Let’s be clear: the ultimate vaccine for polio is peace and an immediate humanitarian ceasefire,” Guterres told reporters at UN headquarters in New York.
“But in any case, a polio pause is a must. It is impossible to conduct a polio vaccination campaign with war raging all over.”
He appealed for “concrete assurances” to be provided quickly, warning that preventing and containing the spread of polio in the enclave would take an urgent, massive and co-ordinated effort.
Guterres gave no timetable on when a pause would start and how long it would last.
The UN is set to launch a vaccine campaign in Gaza for children under the age of 10, but the “challenges are grave”, Guterres added.
Last week, the World Health Organization (WHO) set out plans to administer 1.6 million polio vaccine doses in Gaza to prevent an outbreak that could exacerbate the current humanitarian crisis.
Two rounds of mass vaccination – aimed at hundreds of thousands of children – will begin this month after the detection of poliovirus in sewage in southern Khan Younis and central Deir al-Balah.
Gaza’s Health Ministry declared a polio epidemic in the Palestinian enclave last month, blaming Israel’s military offensive.
At least 95 per cent vaccination coverage will be needed during each of the two rounds of the campaign to prevent polio’s spread and reduce its emergence given the devastation in Gaza, Guterres said.
He added that a successful campaign will require the transport for vaccines and refrigeration equipment at every step, the entry of polio experts into Gaza, reliable internet and phone services, and other elements.
“And, above all, a successful polio vaccination campaign needs safety” for health workers, for children and their families to get to vaccination sites and for those facilities to be protected from bombings, Guterres added.
A senior western official, told Reuters there was at least one confirmed case and two suspected among Palestinians in the enclave, adding that there might not be a single humanitarian pause but several shorter ones.
The danger is that the threat of disease outbreaks is not confined to Gaza, which the official said was a “contagion time bomb”, as when the rainy season begins in late autumn, the contaminated raw sewage could be “pushed” down to an aquifer from which Israel, Egypt and Jordan draw water.
Poliomyelitis, which is spread mainly through the faecal-oral route, is a highly infectious virus that can invade the nervous system and cause paralysis.
Children under five are most at risk from the viral disease, especially infants under two since normal vaccination campaigns have been disrupted by 10 months of conflict.
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Gaza records first polio case in 25 years as UN chief urges pause to vaccinate thousands
Amr Mostafa
The National / August 17, 2024
Tests in Jordan confirmed disease in an unvaccinated 10-month-old in the enclave.
Gaza has recorded its first polio case in 25 years, the Palestinian Health Ministry said on Friday, after UN Secretary General António Guterres called for a pause in the war to vaccinate hundreds of thousands of children.
Tests conducted in Jordan confirmed the disease in an unvaccinated 10-month-old from central Gaza, the Palestinian Health Ministry in Ramallah said.
“Several specialized committees were formed to carry out a campaign with different tasks to limit the spread of the polio epidemic, with the participation of the World Health Organization (WHO), UNICEF, UNRWA, and a number of experts,” it said.
It said the ministry put the plan in place as a result of “the difficult health conditions that the Gaza Strip is going through, the spread of infectious diseases, the flow of sewage in the streets and between the tents of the displaced, the lack of personal hygiene supplies and potable water”.
The potentially fatal, paralyzing disease mostly affects children under the age of five and typically spreads through contaminated water.
Pakistan and Afghanistan are the only countries where the spread of polio has never been eradicated.
According to the UN, Gaza has not registered a polio case for 25 years, although type 2 poliovirus was detected in samples collected from the territory’s wastewater in June.
“Doctors suspected the presence of symptoms consistent with polio,” the Health Ministry said. “After conducting the necessary tests in the Jordanian capital, Amman, the infection was confirmed.”
The case was announced shortly after Guterres called for two seven-day breaks in the Gaza war to vaccinate more than 640,000 children.
“Let’s be clear: the ultimate vaccine for polio is peace and an immediate humanitarian ceasefire,” Guterres said on Friday.
“But in any case, a polio pause is a must. It is impossible to conduct a polio vaccination campaign with war raging all over.”
He appealed for “concrete assurances” to be provided quickly, warning that preventing and containing the spread of polio in the enclave would take an urgent and co-ordinated effort.
While the World Health Organisation did not confirm the polio case, it said on Friday that three children in Gaza were found with acute flaccid paralysis – the onset of weakness or paralysis with reduced muscle tone, a common symptom of polio.
The children’s stool samples have been sent for testing to the Jordan National Polio Laboratory, the agency said.
More than 1.6 million doses of the polio vaccine are expected to arrive in Gaza by the end of August, the WHO said, in time for the vaccination campaigns which would have to be conducted in two rounds. Children under 10 will be given two drops of the oral vaccine against type 2 poliovirus.
Health officials in Gaza warned they would not be able to stop the spread of polio and treat people without an urgent ceasefire in place.
The warning came as international mediators expressed hope that a ceasefire deal was within reach after two days of talks, mediated by the US, Egypt and Qatar on Friday. The mediators said that they plan to reconvene in Cairo next week to seal an agreement to stop the fighting which has killed more than 40.000 in the enclave.
Delegates have spent months trying to reach a three-phase plan in which Hamas would release the hostages in exchange for a lasting ceasefire, the withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza and the release of Palestinians detained by Israel.
Amr Mostafa – Breaking News reporter
