For the children in war-torn Gaza, life’s not just about a daily struggle to escape death from the skies, and malnutrition. They also face the constant threat of outbreaks of crippling viruses, like the polio virus.
“Children under five years are at risk, and especially infants under two because many have not been vaccinated over the nine months of conflict,” the WHO Director-General, Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, has pointed out.
Writing in The Guardian on 26 July 2024, the WHO Director-General noted that the polio virus was detected in wastewater samples in Gaza recently, an alarming yet unsurprising development given the dismantled state of the territory’s health systems after nine relentless months of war.
“Across Gaza, more than 39,000 people have been killed, 89,000 wounded, and more than 10,000 are estimated to be missing. Most hospitals are no longer able to function. Already, diarrhoeal diseases, respiratory infections and hepatitis A, among others, are raging through Gaza. Nearly everyone in Gaza is facing acute food insecurity and catastrophic hunger. Thousands of children are malnourished, making them even more susceptible to disease,” he wrote.
The bombing of Al-Tabin School in Gaza this Saturday (August 10), which claimed more than 100 lives, has drawn widespread condemnation across the world.
Gaza Strip, which has been under relentless attack for months, has only limited access to clean and safe water and the sanitary conditions have only worsened for the nearly 2.3 million people who live here.
Gaza Strip, it may be noted, is spread over an area of 365 sq km (141 sq mile).
Polio samples
“Since early May, almost a million people have been relocated from Rafah to Khan Younis and Deir al-Balah, where the polio samples were detected. While no cases of polio have been recorded yet, without immediate action, it is just a matter of time before it reaches the thousands of children who have been left unprotected,” wrote Dr Ghebreyesus.
“The World Health Organization (WHO) is sending more than 1m polio vaccines to Gaza, which will be administered in the coming weeks to prevent children being struck down by the disease. However, without an immediate ceasefire and a vast acceleration of humanitarian aid, including a targeted vaccination campaign focused on young children, people will continue to die from preventable diseases and injuries that are treatable,” he noted.
“Repeatedly, we have seen polio thrive in places hit by conflict and instability. In 2017, in wartorn Syria, an outbreak of variant poliovirus – a mutated form of the wild virus that can spread in under-immunised populations – left 74 children paralysed. In Somalia today, a decade-long civil war has resulted in the longest unbroken chain of variant poliovirus transmission globally, circulating since 2017. In Afghanistan and Pakistan, the last two countries where children are paralysed by wild polio, humanitarian crises and insecurity have prevented the world from stomping out the virus for good,” he wrote.
“Now, children trapped in Gaza face this same threat and are left with nowhere to turn. Prior to the conflict, vaccination coverage was at 99%. Now that rate has dropped to 86%, which is dangerous as this provides pockets of unvaccinated children, where the virus can circulate.
“The decimation of the health system, lack of security, destruction of infrastructure, mass displacement of people and shortage of medical supplies have prevented children from receiving many lifesaving vaccines,” Dr Ghebreyesus pointed out in the article.
“Only 16 of Gaza’s 36 hospitals are functional – with reduced services – and less than half of the primary healthcare facilities are operational. Meanwhile, 70% of all sewage pumps in Gaza have been destroyed and not a single wastewater treatment plant is working. These conditions present the perfect breeding ground for disease to spread.
Perfect breeding ground for disease
“With 70% of sewage pumps destroyed and no wastewater treatment plants operational, the conditions in Gaza are a perfect breeding ground for disease,” he pointed out.
“In the face of profound peril and hardship, the international community has a responsibility to leave no one behind and prioritize health and well-being. This is not unprecedented – from El Salvador’s civil war in the 1980s to conflict in Sudan’s Darfur region in the early 2000s, ceasefires, called “days of tranquillity”, have been negotiated to essentially put wars on pause and ensure life-saving vaccines reach communities trapped in inaccessible, conflict-affected areas,” he argues.
“Today, the detection of polio in Gaza is yet another sobering reminder of the dire conditions that people are facing. Continued conflict will not only add to the rising death toll in the territory, but it will hamper efforts to identify and respond to preventable health threats like polio,” Dr Ghebreyesus notes.
“While immediate efforts to reach every child with polio vaccines are now being put into motion, ultimately, a ceasefire and free-flowing aid are the only definite ways to protect people and prevent an explosive outbreak.”
Repeatedly, the world has seen polio thrive in places hit by conflict and instability. In 2017, in war-torn Syria, an outbreak of variant poliovirus – a variant form of the virus that can spread in under-immunised populations – left 74 children paralysed.
Image of a Gaza child by Hosny Salah from Pixabay
