UN chief calls for 'polio pause' in Gaza war to fight virus | United Nations News

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has called for a halt to the Gaza war on humanitarian grounds to enable a polio vaccination campaign to be carried out after the virus was detected in the besieged area.

“It is impossible to carry out a polio vaccination campaign while war is raging everywhere,” he told reporters at UN headquarters in New York on Friday.

Guterres called on the warring parties to immediately guarantee humanitarian pauses and warned that preventing and containing the spread of polio in the Gaza Strip would require urgent and coordinated efforts.

“To be clear, the ultimate vaccine against polio is peace and an immediate humanitarian ceasefire,” Guterres said. “But in any case, a polio pause is a must.”

The UN chief added that the organization was close to launching a polio vaccination campaign for children under 10 in Gaza, but that the “challenges are great.”

Given the destruction in the Gaza Strip, a vaccination rate of at least 95 percent is needed in each of the two rounds of the campaign to prevent the spread of polio and reduce its incidence, Guterres said.

He pointed out that a successful campaign requires facilitating the transport of vaccines and refrigeration equipment at every step, allowing polio experts to enter Gaza, and providing reliable internet and telephone services.

According to the UN Children's Fund UNICEF, the vaccination will be carried out in two rounds and is expected to be rolled out across the Gaza Strip in late August and September this year.

Hamas said it supported the UN's call for a humanitarian pause in polio vaccination for children.

“Hamas is also demanding the delivery of medicine and food to the more than two million Palestinians trapped in the Gaza Strip,” Izzat al-Rishq, a member of the group's political bureau, said in a statement.

In July, the Gaza Health Ministry declared a polio epidemic in Gaza, blaming the Israeli military offensive in the enclave for the spread of the deadly virus. The Israeli military said in July that it had already begun vaccinating its soldiers against the disease.

Polio has been detected in sewage water in the Gaza Strip's Deir el-Balah and Khan Younis governorates, Dr. Hamid Jafari, a polio specialist at the World Health Organization (WHO), said earlier this month.

Without adequate health care, the population of the Gaza Strip is particularly vulnerable to disease outbreaks, public health officials and aid organizations said.

Israel has blocked humanitarian aid groups from entering the Gaza Strip and Israeli forces have bombed aid convoys, killing dozens of aid workers.

In addition, the Israeli offensive has left most hospitals in the Gaza Strip 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.

Dr Tanya Haj-Hassan, a pediatric intensive care physician, told Al Jazeera last month that the presence of the virus in wastewater was a “ticking time bomb.”

“The usual way to treat a polio case is to isolate it and make sure it uses a toilet that no one else uses. You also make sure it is not around other people. [but] “That’s impossible,” she said.

“Currently, everyone in refugee camps is without vaccines for at least nine months. This includes children who would otherwise have been vaccinated against polio and adults who should receive a booster dose in the event of an outbreak, including health workers,” she added.

Poliomyelitis is transmitted primarily by the fecal-oral route and is a highly contagious virus that can penetrate the nervous system and cause paralysis.

Children under five, and especially infants under two, are most at risk from the viral disease because normal vaccination campaigns have been disrupted by the ten-month conflict.

“We need a ceasefire, even a temporary ceasefire, to be able to carry out these campaigns successfully,” Hanan Balkhy, WHO regional director, told reporters earlier this month.

“Otherwise we risk further spread of the virus, including across borders,” he added.