Like so many other Gaza residents, Eid al-Attar, a teacher in the northern Gaza Strip, spends his days trying to find enough food and water for his family to survive. Since the war began last October, the 42-year-old has been displaced eight times with his family and has done everything he can to protect his five children from the conflict. Now, the Palestinian territory is facing a new threat: polio, a highly contagious and potentially deadly disease.
“We cannot protect our children. We are exposed to death at any time due to constant bombing and insecurity. And I cannot protect them from diseases either,” he said. Tutor at the start of a vaccination campaign led by the World Health Organization (WHO) last Sunday in Deir al Balah. “We live in a tent that does not protect us from anything, there is no medicine, there is garbage everywhere and the streets are full of sewage,” Al Attar laments.
Better than expected
The campaign began in the central Gaza Strip and in the first three days, more than 187,000 children under the age of 10 were vaccinated – above the target of 156,500. “The first phase of the polio campaign is a success,” WHO regional director Hanan Balkhy said on the social network X.
The WHO spokesman for the Palestinian territories assured Tuesday that the campaign was progressing faster than expected. “It’s going well,” Rik Peeperkorn told the press, who estimates that they have “at least 10 days” left of intense vaccination, which will have to be repeated within a month.
The campaign is particularly challenging in the current context. Israel’s relentless bombardment of Gaza has devastated its health system, with 31 of the territory’s 36 hospitals damaged or completely destroyed, according to a WHO assessment. About 90 percent of Gaza’s 2.3 million people have been forced to flee their homes and seek shelter, some repeatedly. Most live in overcrowded and unsanitary makeshift camps. WHO says diseases such as hepatitis, pneumonia and diarrhoeal diseases, as well as lice, scabies and other skin diseases, have increased.
Of the nearly 41,000 deaths recorded since October by the Hamas-controlled Gaza Health Ministry, it is unclear what percentage are due to the disease. However, one of health workers’ worst fears was confirmed recently, when the first case of type 2 polio in the past 25 years was recorded in Gaza. The victim was an unvaccinated 10-month-old baby. The contagious disease can cause paralysis and death, especially in babies and young children.
Polio was eradicated from the Gaza Strip in 1999, but in July the virus was detected in routine sewage testing. It is thought to have come from an oral polio vaccine, which contains a weakened live virus and, in rare cases, can be shed by vaccinated people and evolve into a new, contagious form.
Polio paralyzed the 10-month-old baby’s leg. Due to the war that began almost 11 months ago, he had not been vaccinated against any disease. According to WHO, hundreds more people are likely already infected but have no symptoms, putting hundreds of thousands of children in Gaza at risk. WHO and other UN agencies, working with Gaza health authorities, launched a vaccination campaign on Sunday to prevent polio from re-emerging in this new generation of Gazans.
Humanitarian breaks
To prevent the spread of the disease, it is necessary that at least 90 percent of the 640,000 children under 10 in Gaza be vaccinated with two drops of oral vaccine in two cycles, four weeks apart. This is a difficult goal to achieve in an active war zone where conditions can change rapidly.
Hamas and Israel have agreed to a humanitarian pause in the fighting between 6 a.m. and 3 p.m. for several days, during which vaccination teams plan to visit 160 sites. WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus stressed on Wednesday that both sides have respected the humanitarian pauses for now.
The campaign began Sunday in central Gaza and, starting Thursday, will move south to areas that are harder to reach because of the fighting. But in the central area, four vaccination centers will continue to operate over the next three days “to ensure that no child is missed,” Tedros said.
Damaged or destroyed roads make it difficult for health workers to move around, and Israeli bombardments have hampered the ability of aid workers and shipments. According to the U.S.-based organization Near East Refugee Aid, four people were killed last week in an Israeli airstrike that hit the front of a convoy carrying food and fuel to a hospital in Rafah; Israel claimed it attacked the gunmen who seized the convoy, but the U.S.-based organization and several witnesses said it was not true that there were fighters in the area.
In August, Israel allowed 1.3 million doses of polio vaccine into Gaza, which are now being stored refrigerated in a warehouse in the city of Deir al-Balah, one of the few where there is no fighting. Another shipment of 400,000 doses is expected to arrive in the territory soon. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said last week that Israel was aware of the importance of preventing a polio outbreak in the Gaza Strip and also “of the goal of preventing the spread of disease in the region.”
Keep cold
Another major challenge is powering the generators that keep the vaccines cold due to the lack of fuel. All cold chain storage facilities have been destroyed. Dr. Khalil Abu Qasmiya, director of the Ministry of Health in Deir al-Balah, says he and his team wake up at regular intervals during the night to check that the temperatures in the refrigerators remain stable and that the food packages have not melted. ice. “Since the first case of polio was confirmed, the Ministry of Health in Gaza has done everything possible to contribute,” he says.
Unlike many other international efforts to alleviate suffering in Gaza, which have been hampered by continued Israeli attacks, the polio vaccination campaign is proceeding smoothly so far. It is also hoped that efforts to repair the cold chain system will allow for the start of routine health vaccinations at the end of this extraordinary polio campaign.
“We are all suffering a lot. I am happy that I can do something to protect my children,” says Nabil al Hasanat, 50, father of two daughters aged six and five months.
The underlying humanitarian crisis persists and there is no sign of further progress in the ceasefire talks. In this sense, José Lainez Kafati, Social and Behaviour Change Specialist at UNICEF Palestine, recalls that “polio is just one of the many problems that children in Gaza are facing”. “Even though we have managed to launch the polio vaccination campaign, there are other serious problems that remain unaddressed due to the lack of access to humanitarian aid,” he explains. “The total collapse of the health system, the near-total destruction of water and sanitation infrastructure, as well as the living conditions of Gazan families who are no longer homeless, make them vulnerable to further epidemics.”
UNICEF is participating in the vaccination campaign, alongside the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA), to which the WHO director thanked them for their collaboration, but issued a warning: “Together, we are helping to prevent the spread of polio in Gaza, even as other health needs remain immense.
Text translated by Emma Reverter and updated by elDiario.es
