Photo: Sanaullah Seiam Agence France-Presse An Afghan health worker administers polio vaccine drops to a child during a polio vaccination campaign in Kandahar, July 8, 2024.
Agence France-Presse
Published at 5:10 p.m.
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The Palestinian Authority Ministry of Health announced Friday the first confirmed case of polio in the Gaza Strip, which has been free of the disease for 25 years according to the UN, which is calling for “humanitarian pauses” for vaccinate more than 640,000 children.
A first case has been confirmed in the Palestinian territory ravaged for more than ten months following analyses of stool samples from three Gazan children “presenting suspected acute flaccid paralysis, a common symptom of polio” at the Jordanian national polio laboratory.
According to the Palestinian ministry, this is a “ten-month-old baby who had not been vaccinated” in Deir al-Balah, in the centre of the besieged Palestinian territory, deprived of electricity, heavily rationed in water and where almost all of the 2.4 million inhabitants have been displaced by the war.
A few hours earlier on Friday, UN chief Antonio Guterres had called on “all parties to immediately provide concrete assurances guaranteeing humanitarian pauses for the campaign” of vaccination.
Polio break necessary
“It is impossible to conduct a polio vaccination campaign in the middle of war,” Mr. Guterres insisted. “A polio pause is needed.”
Before him, the World Health Organization (WHO) and UNICEF had called for “seven-day” humanitarian pauses to allow for two vaccination campaigns for more than 640,000 children under the age of ten.
200% Deposit Bonus up to €3,000 180% First Deposit Bonus up to $20,000These two series “should be launched at the end of August and in September 2024 throughout the Gaza Strip in order to prevent the spread of the variant currently circulating,” known as cVDPV2, the two agencies specified.
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Each pause is to last seven days, WHO spokeswoman Margaret Harris told AFP.
The poliovirus was first detected in July in wastewater samples collected in late June in Khan Younis, in the south of the Gaza Strip, and Deir el-Balah, the WHO and UNICEF said, while the Palestinian territory has been free of the disease for 25 years, according to the UN.
More than 1.6 million doses of the nOPV2 vaccine are to be delivered to Gaza by the end of August, according to the press release.
The vaccines will then be administered by 708 teams in each municipality of the Gaza Strip.
The UN stresses that vaccination coverage must be at least 95% in each vaccination campaign to prevent the spread of polio, “given that health, water and sanitation systems are severely disrupted in Gaza.”
No borders for polio
Money, fuel for vaccination teams, and functioning internet and telephone networks will also be needed to inform the population.
Thus, “the entry of polio experts,” insisted Antonio Guterres, while only a handful of humanitarians still manage to enter and exit the territory, all of whose entrances are now held by Israel.
A threat that was widespread until about forty years ago years, polio – which can cause irreversible paralysis in a matter of hours – has largely disappeared from the world thanks to vaccines.
But another form of poliovirus can spread: one that has mutated from the source originally contained in the oral polio vaccine (OPV). It is this poliovirus derived from a vaccine strain that was found in Gaza.
And polio “doesn’t care about dividing lines”, insisted Antonio Guterres, highlighting the threat “not only to children in Gaza, but also in neighboring countries”.