The World Health Organization (WHO) warned on Tuesday of a high risk of the polio virus spreading across the Gaza Strip and beyond its borders due to the dire health and sanitation conditions in the war-torn Palestinian enclave.
Ayadil Saparbekov, team lead for health emergencies at WHO in Gaza and the West Bank, reported that circulating vaccine-derived poliovirus type 2 had been found in environmental sewage samples in Gaza.
“There is a high risk of the circulating vaccine-derived polio virus spreading in Gaza, not only because of its detection but due to the very dire water sanitation situation,” he told reporters in Geneva via video link from Jerusalem.
“It may also spill over internationally, at a very high point,” he added.
Saparbekov mentioned that WHO and UNICEF workers were scheduled to arrive in Gaza on Thursday to collect human stool samples as part of a risk assessment related to the virus discovery.
He expressed hope that the assessment, expected to be completed by the end of the week, would enable health officials to issue recommendations, “including the need for a mass vaccination campaign, the type of vaccine to be used, and the age group of the population that will need to be vaccinated.”
Poliomyelitis, mainly spread through the fecal-oral route, is a highly infectious virus that can invade the nervous system and cause paralysis. It predominantly affects children under the age of five.
On Sunday, Israel’s military announced it would start offering the polio vaccine to soldiers serving in the Gaza Strip after remnants of the contagious virus were found in test samples from the coastal enclave.
The military also stated that, with the cooperation of international groups, enough vaccines had been brought in to cover more than one million people in Gaza, which has a total population of around 2.3 million.
Public health officials and aid groups highlighted that without proper health services, the population of Gaza is particularly vulnerable to disease outbreaks.
“I’m extremely worried about an outbreak happening in Gaza. And this is not only polio, but different outbreaks of communicable diseases,” Saparbekov said.
