Antonio Guterres says Gaza is in “humanitarian freefall” and calls for pause in fighting so aid agencies can deliver 1.6 million doses of the nOPV2 polio vaccine to the strip.
ADVERTISEMENTPalestinian health officials have reported the first case of polio in an unvaccinated 10-month-old child in the Gazan city of Deir al-Balah.
After discovering the child’s symptoms, tests were conducted in Jordan’s capital Amman and the case was confirmed to be polio, health officials said.
It’s the first case of the disease in years to be reported in the coastal enclave that has been devastated by the Israel-Hamas war since last October.
The potentially fatal, paralysing disease mostly strikes children under the age of five and typically spreads through contaminated water.
Pakistan and Afghanistan are the only countries where the spread of polio has never been stopped.
On Friday, UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres called for seven-day pauses in fighting to allow agencies to roll out a vaccination campaign across the strip.
“We know how an effective polio vaccination campaign must be administered. Given the wholesale devastation in Gaza, at least 95% vaccination coverage will be needed during each round of the two round campaign to prevent polio spread and reduce its emergence,” he said.
“I am appealing to all parties to provide concrete assurances right away, guaranteeing humanitarian pauses for the campaign.”
Two rounds of a polio vaccinations are expected to be launched at the end of August and September in a bid to prevent the spread of variant type 2 poliovirus (cVDPV2).
During each round of the campaign, the Palestinian Ministry of Health (MoH), in collaboration with the World Health Organization (WHO), the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) and partners, will provide two drops of novel oral polio vaccine type 2 (nOPV2) to more than 640,000 children under ten years of age.
Over 1.6 million doses of nOPV2, which is used to stop cVDPV2 transmission, will be delivered to the Gaza Strip. Vaccinations will be administered by 708 teams at hospitals, field hospitals and primary healthcare centres in each municipality of the strip. Around 2700 health workers, including mobile teams and community outreach workers, will support the delivery in both rounds of the campaign.
The poliovirus was first detected in Gaza in July in environmental samples from Khan Younis and Deir al-Balah. The UN says Gaza has been polio-free for the last 25 years.
But Polio isn’t the only health challenge facing Gaza, where Palestinian health authorities say more than 40,000 people have been killed by Israeli airstrikes and other attacks since the conflict escalated in October 2023.
Just 16 of Gaza’s 36 hospitals are now partially functioning and other medical services have been depleted. Israeli forces have destroyed all of Gaza’s wastewater treatment plants and 70 per cent of its sewage pumps, according to Oxfam, meaning many streets in Gaza are flooded with water contaminated with untreated sewage making it a prime environment for diseases to spread.
That’s particularly true during the warmer summer months when mosquitoes and other bugs proliferate and food spoils faster.
As a result of the conflict, people in Gaza are grappling with a rise respiratory infections, diarrhoea, scabies and lice, skin rashes, chickenpox, jaundice, and hepatitis A, among other health issues that are unlikely to spread beyond Gaza because it is effectively cut off from the rest of the region.