A top World Health Organization official said Tuesday he was “extremely concerned” about a potential outbreak after poliovirus was found in sewage in war-torn Gaza, warning that infectious diseases could cause more deaths than injuries.
UN agencies said last week that the Global Polio Laboratory Network detected vaccine-derived type 2 poliovirus in six environmental samples collected from sewage in the Gaza Strip on June 23.
Ayadil Saparbekov, the World Health Organization’s head of health emergencies in the occupied Palestinian territories, stressed that “we have not yet collected human samples” so it is unclear whether anyone has actually been infected with the virus.
But he told reporters in Geneva via video link from Jerusalem: “I am very worried.”
One type of vaccine against polio contains a small amount of weakened but live polio virus, which can sometimes cause outbreaks. It is a crippling and potentially fatal viral disease that mainly affects children under the age of five.
The oral polio vaccine (OPV) replicates in the gut and can be passed on to others through feces-contaminated water – meaning it won’t harm the child who is vaccinated, but it could infect their neighbours in places where hygiene and vaccination levels are low.
While epidemiological studies and risk assessments are ongoing, Saparbekov said he was deeply concerned about the potential for any disease to spread to Gaza, which is facing a major humanitarian crisis following more than nine months of war following Hamas’ deadly Oct. 7 attack inside Israel.
“I am very concerned about the outbreaks in Gaza,” he said, pointing to last year’s confirmation that hepatitis A is spreading, “and now we may have polio here as well.”
“With a damaged health system, lack of water and sanitation, and people’s lack of access to health services… this is going to be a very bad situation,” he warned.
“We may have more people dying from various infectious diseases than from injury-related illnesses.”
That speaks volumes for Gaza, where the war has killed more than 39,000 people, mostly civilians, according to figures from the Hamas-run Gaza health ministry.
Israel’s retaliatory military operation was preceded by a Hamas attack on southern Israel on October 7 that resulted in the deaths of 1,197 people, most of them civilians, according to an AFP count based on Israeli data.
The militants also seized 251 hostages, 116 of whom are still in Gaza, 44 of whom the Israeli military says are dead.
Saparbekov described the situation in Gaza on Tuesday as dire, where only 16 of the territory’s 36 hospitals are partially functional.
The World Health Organization has long stressed the urgent need for medical evacuation of the seriously ill and injured from Gaza.
While in recent months the WHO has said that around 10,000 people are waiting to leave the Gaza Strip, Saparbekov suggested that this number has risen to “up to 14,000 people who may need medical treatment outside the Gaza Strip”.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)