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UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Friday (August 16) called on all parties to the Gaza conflict to provide concrete guarantees for a humanitarian ceasefire to allow for polio vaccination campaigns.
Speaking to reporters at the United Nations, Guterres called for immediate assurances and warned that preventing and controlling the spread of polio in the region requires a massively coordinated and urgent effort.
“Let us be clear: the ultimate cure for polio is peace and an immediate humanitarian ceasefire,” Guterres said.
“But in any case, it is necessary to suspend polio prevention and treatment. It is impossible to carry out polio vaccination activities in the midst of war.”
The Palestinian Ministry of Health said in a statement on Friday that the first confirmed case of polio in the Gaza Strip was found in the city of Deir el-Balah. The patient is a 10-month-old baby who had not received any polio vaccination.
Guterres said the United Nations was ready to launch a polio vaccination campaign in Gaza for children under 10 years old, but said the “challenges are enormous.”
Guterres said that given the disaster in Gaza, at least 95% vaccination coverage is needed in each of the two rounds of vaccination campaigns to prevent the spread of polio and reduce its incidence. He added that a successful vaccination campaign requires facilitating the transportation of vaccines and refrigeration equipment at every stage, access to Gaza for polio specialists, and reliable internet and telephone services, among other elements.
Dr. Hamid Jaafari, a WHO polio expert, said at a press conference earlier this month that polio had been detected in sewage in the Gaza governorates of Deir al-Balah and Khan Younis, adding that the virus may have been circulating since September.
A senior Western official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said they knew of at least one confirmed case and two suspected cases in the Palestinian territories, adding that there might not be one humanitarian ceasefire but rather several shorter ones.
The danger is that the threat of disease outbreaks is not limited to Gaza, which the official called a “contagion time bomb.” When the rainy season begins in late fall, the official explained, contaminated, untreated sewage could be “pushed” into aquifers from which Israel, Egypt and Jordan draw water.
Polio, which is primarily transmitted through the fecal-oral route, is a highly contagious virus that can invade the nervous system and cause paralysis.
Children under five are most vulnerable to the viral disease, especially infants under two, as normal vaccination campaigns have been disrupted by the ten-month conflict.
Public health officials and aid groups say Gaza residents are particularly vulnerable to disease outbreaks due to a lack of adequate health services.
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