The first case of polio recorded in the Gaza Strip in 25 years is forcing health workers and aid organizations to face enormous obstacles in carrying out mass vaccination campaigns in the war-torn Palestinian territory.
Relentless Israeli air strikes more than ten months after the start of the war against Hamas, restrictions on the delivery of aid to the besieged area and hot summer temperatures are jeopardising the feasibility of the life-saving vaccination campaign.
Nevertheless, equipment to support the massive campaign, which UN agencies say could begin on August 31, has already arrived in the region.
The Palestinian Health Ministry in the occupied West Bank said last week that tests in Jordan had confirmed polio in an unvaccinated 10-month-old baby from central Gaza, AFP reported.
According to the United Nations, no case has been recorded in Gaza for 25 years, although poliovirus type 2 was detected in sewage samples from the area in June.
The poliovirus is highly contagious and is most commonly spread through sewage and contaminated water – an increasingly common problem in the Gaza Strip as the war between Israel and Hamas drags on.
The disease mainly affects children under five years of age. It can cause deformities and paralysis and is potentially fatal.
The World Health Organization (WHO) and the United Nations Children’s Fund UNICEF say they have detailed plans to vaccinate 640,000 children across the Gaza Strip.
However, a major challenge remains Israel’s devastating military campaign following the October 7 Hamas attack.
“It is extremely difficult to carry out a vaccination campaign of this scale and scope under a sky full of air strikes,” said Juliette Touma, communications director at the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA).
Under the UN plan, 2,700 health workers in 708 teams would participate. The WHO would monitor the efforts, said Richard Peeperkorn, WHO representative in the Palestinian territories.
UNICEF will ensure the cold supply chain while vaccines are brought to Gaza and distributed there, spokesman Jonathan Crickx said.
Cold chain components, including refrigerators, arrived at Israel’s main international airport on Wednesday.
About 1.6 million doses of the oral vaccine would follow and are expected to enter Gaza via the Kerem Shalom border crossing on Sunday, Crickx said.
The UN agencies plan to give two doses each to about 95 percent of children under 10 in Gaza, Crickx said. Surplus doses would compensate for expected losses due to heat or other causes.
While Israel has repeatedly denied accusations that it is blocking aid deliveries to Gaza, aid workers have long complained about the numerous obstacles they face in delivering aid to the area, which is short of everything from fuel to medical equipment to food.
And once troops are in Gaza, fighting, widespread devastation and crumbling infrastructure make supplies and safe access difficult.
Touma, who worked on polio control during the wars in Iraq and Syria, said: “The return of polio to a place where it has been eradicated says a lot.”
The Israeli military campaign has killed at least 40,223 people in the Gaza Strip since October 7.
The Gaza Strip’s health system has been decimated; “only 16 of 36 hospitals are still functioning and only partially,” said Crickx.
Of these, only eleven facilities are able to maintain the cold chain, he added.
The vaccines would initially be kept in a UN warehouse in central Gaza and then distributed to public and private health facilities and UNRWA shelters, “hopefully with refrigerated trucks if we can find them, otherwise with coolers” filled with ice packs, Crickx said.
Many residents of the Gaza Strip are currently living in makeshift camps or UNRWA schools and are therefore difficult to reach, says Moussa Abed, director of the primary health care department at the Gaza Ministry of Health.
Almost all of the territory’s 2.4 million inhabitants were displaced at least once during the war.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called for two seven-day pauses in the war to administer vaccine doses.
Abed said: “Without a safe environment for the vaccination campaign, we will not be able to reach 95 percent of children under 10, which is the goal of this campaign.”
