A mother in Gaza worries her one-month-old son Mohammed may have been infected with polio, as the Palestinian Health Ministry confirmed the territory’s first case on Friday, ending a 25-year period when the region was polio-free.
Ghada al-Ghandour’s son Mohammed began to suffer from skin rashes just three days after he was born.
“He had rashes on his skin as if he was burnt,” he said.
The doctor told her that there was no cream available to treat her child.
She later took him to Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir al-Balah, central Gaza, for diagnosis and treatment.
The rash led his mother to fear that other symptoms and diseases could also occur due to the lack of sanitation and medical supplies in Gaza after more than 10 months of conflict.
In a statement, the Palestinian Health Ministry confirmed that the first case of polio had been detected in the city of Deir al-Balah, in a 10-month-old child who had not been vaccinated.
Similarly, Mohammed has not been vaccinated against polio.
“My son was not given his first vaccine until his first month,” his mother said.
Dr. Hamid Jafari, a World Health Organization (WHO) polio expert, said on August 7 that polio had been detected in sewage in Gaza’s Deir al-Balah and Khan Younis provinces. He also said it was possible the virus had been spreading since September.
‘Another danger to children’
Poliomyelitis, which is spread primarily by the fecal-oral route, is a highly contagious virus that can invade the nervous system and cause paralysis.
Children under 5 years of age are most at risk from this viral disease, especially infants under 2 years of age, as the war has disrupted normal vaccination schedules.
“If the occupiers (Israeli forces) continue to close the border crossings and deny access to vaccines, it will lead to a health disaster,” said Khalil al-Dakran, a spokesman for Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital.
Israel announced on Sunday that it would help deliver polio vaccines to nearly one million children in Gaza.
More than 43,000 vials of the vaccine will arrive in Israel in the coming weeks and be sent to Gaza, according to a statement from COGAT, the Israeli defense agency that coordinates civil affairs with the Palestinians. The statement said this would be enough for two doses for more than one million children.
But al-Daqran, of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital, said the vaccination campaign could not begin without the fighting stopping.
The World Health Organization said on August 16 that the resurgence of polio was “another threat to children in the Gaza Strip and neighboring countries.”
According to the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics, nearly half of Gaza’s 2.3 million population is under the age of 18, and approximately 15% of the population are children under the age of 5.
In addition to the threat of a resurgence of polio and other diseases, Palestinians also face a humanitarian crisis with shortages of food, fuel and water, causing them to suffer every day.
According to Israeli figures, the war in Gaza began when Hamas attacked southern Israel, killing 1,200 people and taking more than 250 hostage. According to Gaza officials, the number of Palestinians killed in the Israeli military operation has exceeded 40,000.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
