By Blessing Nweke
The World Health Organization (WHO) has announced a major vaccination effort in Gaza following the detection of polio in wastewater samples. WHO chief Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus revealed that the agency plans to dispatch 1.2 million doses of the polio vaccine to the region, targeting 600,000 children under eight years old. The vaccination campaign will commence on August 17 and will be conducted in two rounds.
Polio, a debilitating and potentially fatal disease, is primarily transmitted through contact with contaminated faecal matter. Gaza’s current health crisis, exacerbated by a protracted Israeli military operation, presents significant challenges to this initiative. The ongoing conflict has left only 16 of Gaza’s 36 hospitals partially operational and destroyed much of the region’s sewage infrastructure, which facilitates the virus’s spread.
Andrea King, a WHO official, highlighted the immense logistical hurdles involved in the vaccination effort, emphasizing the need for the vaccines to be kept within a specific temperature range. Ensuring these conditions amid ongoing hostilities is a considerable challenge. The WHO has called for a ceasefire and unrestricted access to Gaza to facilitate the vaccine rollout, although previous requests for humanitarian ceasefires have been denied by Israel.
Recent testing revealed that polio had been circulating in Gaza since at least September of the previous year, with conditions in the region providing a “perfect breeding ground” for the disease due to overcrowding and poor sanitation. The WHO noted that immunization rates in Gaza had declined from 99% in 2022 to 89% in 2023.
Gaza’s Hamas-run health ministry recently declared the territory a “polio epidemic zone,” attributing the outbreak to the ongoing Israeli military offensive and the resulting destruction of health infrastructure. The Israeli military’s campaign, initiated in response to a Hamas attack that resulted in 1,200 Israeli casualties, has led to significant casualties and a deteriorating humanitarian situation in Gaza.
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