First polio case in Gaza during Israel-Hamas war, officials say – NBC 7 San Diego

The threat of polio in the Gaza Strip is increasing rapidly. Aid organizations are therefore calling for an urgent pause in the war so that vaccinations can be accelerated and a large-scale outbreak can be prevented. One case has been confirmed, others are suspected, and the virus was detected in sewage at six different locations in July.

Polio was eradicated in Gaza 25 years ago, but vaccination rates dropped after the war began 10 months ago and the area has become a breeding ground for the virus, aid groups say. Hundreds of thousands of displaced Palestinians are crowded into tent camps that lack clean water and proper sewage and garbage disposal.

To prevent a widespread outbreak, aid groups are preparing to vaccinate more than 600,000 children in the coming weeks, but they say the ambitious vaccination plans will not be possible without a pause in fighting between Israel and Hamas.

A possible ceasefire agreement could not come soon enough.

“We are anticipating and preparing for the worst-case scenario of a polio outbreak in the coming weeks or months,” Francis Hughes, CARE International's Gaza response director, told the Associated Press.

The two regions play an important role in the tensions between Israel and Palestine.

The World Health Organization and the United Nations Children's Fund UNICEF said in a joint statement on Friday that at least a seven-day break was needed to implement a mass vaccination plan.

The UN is planning to bring 1.6 million doses of polio vaccine to Gaza, where sanitation and water supplies have been destroyed, leaving overcrowded tent camps with open pits full of human excrement. Families living in the camps have little clean water or soap to maintain hygiene and sometimes use sewage for drinking or washing clothes and dishes.

At least 225 informal dumpsites and landfills have sprung up around Gaza, many of them near family homes, according to a report published in July by Dutch nonprofit PAX, which tracked the locations using satellite imagery.

Polio is highly contagious and is mainly transmitted through contact with contaminated feces, water or food. It can cause breathing difficulties and irreversible paralysis, usually in the legs. The disease mainly affects young children and is sometimes fatal.

According to estimates by the aid organization Mercy Corps, around 50,000 babies born since the beginning of the war have not been vaccinated against polio.

WHO and UNICEF said on Friday that three children were suspected of being infected and that their stool samples were currently being examined in a Jordanian laboratory. The Health Ministry in Ramallah in the West Bank said late Friday that tests conducted in Jordan had confirmed a case in a 10-month-old child in Gaza.

“This is very worrying,” UNICEF spokesman Ammar Ammar said on Saturday. “It is impossible to carry out the vaccination in an active war zone and the alternative would be unacceptable for the children in Gaza and the entire region.”

Aid workers expect the number of suspected cases to rise and fear that the disease will be difficult to contain without immediate intervention.

“We are not optimistic because we know that doctors may also miss the warning signs,” said Hughes of CARE International.

Health workers in Gaza are preparing for a mass vaccination campaign that will begin in late August and continue into September. The aim is to immunize 640,000 children under the age of 10 in two rounds, according to the WHO.

The Israeli military body in charge of Palestinian civil affairs, COGAT, said it was “preparing to support a comprehensive vaccination campaign.” And Hamas said in a statement on Friday that it would support a seven-day ceasefire to facilitate vaccinations. Ceasefire talks will resume next week in Cairo.

Concerns about polio were first raised when the WHO announced in July that sewage samples from six locations in Khan Younis and Deir al-Balah in southern and central Gaza tested positive for a variant of the virus used in vaccines. The weakened form of the virus used in vaccines can mutate into a more powerful version and cause an outbreak in areas lacking adequate immunization, the WHO said.

The only countries where polio is endemic are Afghanistan and Pakistan, but outbreaks of the vaccine-transmitted virus have also occurred in war-torn Ukraine and Yemen, although conditions there are nowhere near as bad as in Gaza.

Part of the challenge in Gaza, where polio has been absent for a quarter of a century, is raising awareness so health workers can recognise the symptoms, the UN says. The territory's health system has been devastated by war, with staff overwhelmed with treating the wounded and patients suffering from diarrhea and other illnesses.

Before the war, 99 percent of Gaza's population was vaccinated against polio. According to the WHO, this figure is now 86 percent. The goal is to bring polio immunization in the Gaza Strip back to over 95 percent.

While more than 440,000 doses of polio vaccine were brought to Gaza in December, that stockpile has dwindled to just over 86,000, according to Hamid Jafari, director of polio eradication for the WHO Eastern Mediterranean Region.

The 1.6 million oral doses being brought to Gaza are an advanced version of the vaccine that is less susceptible to mutations that could lead to an outbreak, the WHO said.

Providing the vaccine to Gaza is only the first step.

Due to Israeli military attacks, fighting between troops and Hamas, and increasing lawlessness that has led to the looting of convoys, UN staff are struggling to collect medical supplies and other relief items.

In addition, the vaccines must be refrigerated, which has become difficult in Gaza, where electricity is scarce. About 15 to 20 refrigerated trucks serve all of Gaza, and they must also be used to transport food and other medical supplies, said a senior Israeli army officer at COGAT who was not authorized to speak to the media and spoke on condition of anonymity.

Palestinians also have difficulty getting around, and their inability to reach health facilities will further hamper the vaccination campaign, says Sameer Sah of Medical Aid for Palestinians.

“There is no transportation system. The roads are destroyed and there are quadcopters shooting at people,” Sah said, referring to Israeli drones that frequently carry out attacks. Israel says its attacks target Hamas militias.

The WHO said stopping the fighting was critical so that “children and families can safely reach health facilities and social workers can reach children who do not have access to health facilities.”

According to the UN, only about a third of the 36 hospitals and 40 percent of primary health care facilities in the Gaza Strip are functional. However, the WHO and UNICEF say their vaccination campaign is being carried out with the help of 2,700 volunteers in every municipality in the Gaza Strip.

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Associated Press writers Melanie Lidman in Tel Aviv, Israel, and Samy Magdy in Cairo contributed to this report.