Gaza recorded its first polio case in 25 years, the Palestinian health ministry said on Friday, after UN chief Antonio Guterres called for millions of children to be vaccinated to halt the Israel-Hamas war.
Tests in Jordan confirmed the disease in a 10-month-old child in the central Gaza Strip who had not been vaccinated, the Ramallah health ministry said.
Gaza, where the war is in its 11th month, has not had a recorded case of polio for 25 years, according to the United Nations, although type 2 poliovirus was detected in samples collected from the region’s wastewater in June.
“Doctors suspected the presence of symptoms similar to polio,” the health ministry said. “The infection was confirmed after carrying out the necessary tests in Amman, the capital of Jordan.”
The case came shortly after Guterres called for two seven-day breaks in the Gaza war to allow more than 640,000 children to be vaccinated.
The poliovirus, which is often spread through sewage and contaminated water, is highly contagious. It can cause deformities and paralysis and is potentially fatal. It mainly affects children under the age of five.
The UN health and child agencies said they have drawn up a detailed plan to reach children in the besieged Palestinian territory and work could begin this month.
But he said this would require an end to the 10-month-long war between Israel and Hamas.
“Preventing and controlling the spread of polio will require a massive, coordinated and urgent effort,” Guterres told reporters at UN headquarters in New York.
“I appeal to all parties to provide immediate and concrete assurances on humanitarian grounds for the operation to continue.”
The World Health Organization and the United Nations Children’s Fund UNICEF said they plan to launch two seven-day vaccination campaigns against type 2 poliovirus (cVDPV2) in the Gaza Strip at the end of August.
Last month it was announced that type 2 poliovirus was detected in samples collected in Gaza on June 23.
“These breaks in the fight will help children and families safely get to health facilities and allow community outreach workers to reach children who cannot otherwise reach health facilities for polio vaccination,” the agencies said in a statement.
regional public health issue
It said that after 25 years of polio relief, its re-emergence in the Gaza Strip would pose a threat to neighbouring countries.
“A ceasefire is the only way to ensure public health safety in the Gaza Strip and the region.”
During each phase of the campaign, the Ministry of Health in Gaza, in collaboration with UN agencies, will provide “two drops of the novel oral polio vaccine type 2 (nOPV2) to more than 640,000 children under the age of 10.”
More than 1.6 million doses of nOPV2 are expected to pass through Israel’s Ben Gurion Airport “by the end of August,” the statement said.
The war began with an unprecedented attack on Israel by Hamas on October 7, resulting in the deaths of 1,198 people, most of them civilians, according to Israeli official figures, as calculated by AFP.
The death toll from Israel’s retaliatory military campaign in Gaza surpassed 40,000 on Thursday, according to the Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry, although the ministry did not give details of civilian and Hamas casualties.
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