WHO to send one million polio vaccines to Gaza to protect children

The UN health agency said on Friday that it is sending more than a million polio vaccines to Gaza after the discovery of the highly infectious disease in sewage samples.

In a statement carried by UN News, World Health Organisation (WHO) Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus announced that the vaccines will be administered to children in the coming weeks.

He noted that no cases of polio have been recorded yet but without immediate action, it was "just a matter of time before it reaches the thousands of children who have been left unprotected”.

Humanitarians have expressed deep concerns about the impact of a possible polio emergency in Gaza, amid disastrous sanitary conditions marked by outbreaks of hepatitis A and myriad other preventable diseases, along with a lack of access to healthcare, because of the war.

Preventable deaths crisis

Earlier this week, Dr Ayadil Saparbekov, Team Lead for Health Emergencies at WHO in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, warned that the spread of polio and other communicable diseases could lead to more people dying of preventable illness than from war-related injuries - currently 39,000, according to the local health authorities.

Dr Ayadil Saparbekov speaks during an event. File photo

On 16th July, the WHO said that vaccine-derived poliovirus type 2 had been identified at six locations in sewage samples collected last month from Khan Younis and Deir Al-Balah - two Gaza cities left in ruins by nearly 10 months of intense Israeli bombardment.

WHO explained that poliovirus can emerge in areas where poor vaccination coverage allows the weakened form of the orally taken vaccine virus strain to mutate into a stronger version.

WAM