World Health Organization (WHO) Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus announced that the vaccine will be administered to children in the coming weeks.
He noted that no cases of polio have been recorded yet but if immediate action is not taken, it will “It is only a matter of time before it spreads to thousands of unprotected children.”
Humanitarians have expressed deep concern about the impact of a possible polio emergency in Gaza, amid dire sanitary conditions marked by outbreaks of hepatitis A and countless other preventable diseasesalong with lack of access to health care because of the war.
Preventable mortality crisis
Earlier this week, Dr. Ayadil Saparbekov, WHO’s health emergencies team leader in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, warned that the spread of polio and other infectious diseases could kill more people from preventable diseases than from war-related injuries — currently 39,000, according to local health authorities.
On July 16, the WHO said vaccine-derived type 2 poliovirus had been detected at six sites in wastewater samples collected last month from Khan Younis and Deir Al-Balah — two cities in Gaza devastated by nearly 10 months of intense Israeli bombing.
WHO explains that polio virus can emerge in areas with low vaccination rates, allowing the weaker form of the virus in the oral vaccine to mutate into a stronger version.
Pre-war achievements lost
Before the war, sparked by Hamas-led terror attacks in multiple locations in southern Israel, Gaza’s youth had access to “robust” routine vaccination services, the UN health agency said. persistent on Friday.
But while an estimated 99 percent of children in the Occupied Palestinian Territory received their third dose of polio vaccine in 2022, that rate dropped to 89 percent in 2023, according to the latest routine immunization estimates from WHO and the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF).
As part of a joint effort to combat the type 2 poliovirus variant circulating in Gaza and elsewhere, WHO convened health ministers from across the Eastern Mediterranean region on Thursday.
Gaza – playground of polio
“I saw firsthand the living conditions that were so conducive to the spread of polio and other diseases,” speak “This is a critical moment…to act together quickly and decisively to stop this outbreak, for the children of Gaza,” said Dr Hanan Balkhy, WHO Regional Director for the Eastern Mediterranean, who convened the meeting.
Measures agreed at the meeting included increased surveillance and “multiple mass polio vaccination campaigns” that could be integrated with other key health services “where feasible”.
Representatives also called for a “safe and enabling environment” for the rollout of vaccination “through a ceasefire or days of silence, so that steps can be taken to prevent polio from paralyzing children in Gaza and surrounding areas and countries”.
The latest meeting of the Regional Subcommittee on Polio Eradication and Outbreaks also highlighted the urgent need to stop all forms of polio in the Eastern Mediterranean. This is home to the last two countries in the world with endemic transmission of wild polio: Afghanistan and Pakistan. Countries in the region are also facing active outbreaks of variant polio, such as Somalia, Sudan and Yemen.
