Heba Saleh & Michael Peel
Financial Times / August 23, 2024
Gaza has suffered its first case of polio for 25 years, with the disease paralyzing a 10-month-old baby, the UN has confirmed.
Philippe Lazzarini, head of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA), warned on Friday that polio would not “make the distinction between Palestinian and Israeli children”, highlighting fears of regional spread.
Confirmation of the case by the World Health Organization late on Thursday came as UN agencies active in Gaza rush to organize a polio vaccination campaign in the devastated Palestinian territory.
Lazzarini said every Gaza child aged under 10 should receive a shot to protect against the virus, which can invade the nervous system, cause paralysis and sometimes lead to death.
Hamish Young, UNICEF’s senior emergency co-ordinator in Gaza, who is heading the agency’s efforts inside the territory to launch the vaccination campaign, said: “Polio knows no boundaries. It is very much in the interest of Israel to support the containment of this outbreak. There is a threat to countries including Israel, Egypt and Jordan.”
The polio-infected baby in Gaza was unvaccinated against the disease and had developed paralysis in his lower left leg, said Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director-general of the WHO, the UN’s global health body. Genomic sequencing showed the case was linked to a poliovirus variant detected in sewage samples collected from the besieged coastal enclave in June, he added.
“Given the high risk of poliovirus spread in Gaza and the region, the Palestinian ministry of health, WHO and UNICEF are working to implement two rounds of polio vaccination in the coming weeks to halt transmission,” Tedros posted on X, formerly Twitter.
Ten months of bombardment by Israel have killed more than 40,000 Palestinians, according to Gazan health authorities, and reduced much of the territory to rubble. Israel launched its offensive in response to the October 7 cross-border attacks by Hamas that killed 1,200 people, according to the Israeli government.
Humanitarian groups and other experts have blamed the re-emergence of polio on the disruption to child vaccination programs and the dire sanitation conditions in Gaza, where Israel restricts the entry of many goods. Some 1.9mn people have been displaced to overcrowded makeshift camps amid piles of rubbish and overflowing sewage, with limited access to clean water and hygiene products.
“The re-emergence of the poliovirus in Gaza is a direct result of the destruction of water and sanitation infrastructure, and Israel’s restrictions on repairs and supplies,” said 20 aid agencies including Save the Children and Oxfam this week.
They estimated that 50,000 children born during the war were unlikely to have received any immunization because of the territory’s collapsed health system. Children under five are most at risk from polio because of their immature immune systems.
Routine immunization coverage in the territory has dropped from 99 per cent in 2022 to less than 90 per cent in the first quarter of this year, the WHO said.
UNICEF and WHO last week called for two seven-day humanitarian pauses in the fighting to allow health workers to immunize 640,000 children under the age of 10 with two drops. Without the pause, UN organizations would still launch the vaccination program though it would be “more complicated and more challenging”, Young added.
He noted that more than 84 per cent of Gaza had been under evacuation orders by the Israeli military, forcing displaced populations to be shunted from location to location in search of safety.
“In a polio campaign you go door to door, but in Gaza most people don’t have doors,” said Young. “We will use fixed vaccination locations and hundreds of mobile points to make it easier for people to bring their children.”
COGAT, the Israeli military body responsible for civilian affairs in Gaza, has said it is facilitating the entry of vaccines. Humanitarian groups are also discussing with Israel the entry of fuel, cold chain equipment and security for health teams moving around Gaza.
Polio’s re-emergence in Gaza is a blow to decades-old efforts to eradicate the disease, which, as of 2022, was endemic in its naturally occurring type only in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Heba Saleh in Cairo and Michael Peel in London
