The global health body says the virus could spread even beyond Gaza if the violence does not end to allow for a boost in immunization.
The World Health Organization (WHO) says it is working on a campaign against polio in Gaza after the virus was detected in the country, but the continuation of the war presents several obstacles to the effort.
Although no clinical cases have been diagnosed so far, polio has been detected in sewage in the Deir el-Balah and Khan Younis areas of Gaza, WHO polio expert Hamid Jafari said at a press conference on Wednesday.
“We need a ceasefire, even a temporary ceasefire, to carry out these campaigns successfully. Otherwise, we run the risk of the virus spreading further, including across borders,” said Hanan Balkhy, WHO regional director.
On July 30, the Ministry of Health in Gaza declared the Palestinian territory a “polio epidemic zone”, attributing the reappearance of the virus to Israel’s 10-month military offensive and the resulting destruction of health facilities.
The ministry said the CPV2 strain of the virus was detected in wastewater samples collected in the Khan Younis region in the south of the Strip, as well as in areas of central Gaza.
Children under the age of five are most at risk of contracting the viral disease, especially children under the age of two, as normal vaccination campaigns have been disrupted by the conflict.
Also on Wednesday, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said they will send more than one million polio vaccines to Gaza, AFP news agency reported.
Ghebreyesus said health workers needed freedom of movement in Gaza to administer vaccines, saying a ceasefire or at least a few days of calm was essential to protect Gaza’s children.
“WHO is shipping more than a million polio vaccines that will be administered in the coming weeks,” he said.
Humanitarian aid advocates have stressed the need to end violence to resolve the health crisis in Gaza.
Balkhy also highlighted the risk of developing antimicrobial resistance in Gaza and the possibility of such strains spreading to other countries.
Polio, which spreads mainly via the fecal-oral route, is a highly infectious virus that can invade the nervous system and cause paralysis. Polio cases have declined by 99 percent worldwide since 1988, thanks to mass vaccination campaigns and ongoing efforts to completely eradicate it.
Israel restricted humanitarian groups’ access to Gaza and Israeli forces bombed humanitarian aid convoys, killing dozens of aid workers.
Furthermore, the Israeli offensive put most of Gaza’s hospitals out of service. And the repeated displacement of Palestinians, who continue to face evacuation orders from the Israeli military, makes it difficult to locate and reach unvaccinated children.
There have been growing concerns about the spread of disease in Gaza due to the humanitarian crisis, a lack of medical supplies and Israel’s destruction of water sanitation plants.
Gaza has seen 24 times the normal rate of diarrhea cases, as well as more than 100,000 cases of scabies and lice and 70,000 cases of skin rashes resulting from overcrowding, sewage overflows and contaminated water, said Richard Peeperkorn, a WHO representative. in the region. occupied Palestinian territory.
This story originally appeared on Aljazeera.com read the full story
