During the first three days of the polio vaccination campaign in Gaza, CARE International has vaccinated over 2,000 children under the age of 10 at its primary healthcare centre in Deir Al-Balah.
The campaign, led by the World Health Organization (WHO) and UNICEF in collaboration with partners, aims to immunise 640,000 children in Gaza from a highly infectious disease that could cause irreversible paralysis. It follows the first case of polio in Gaza in 25 years being found in a 10-month-old baby in August.
Jolien Veldwijk, CARE Palestine (West Bank and Gaza) Country Director, said:
“The polio outbreak is another sobering example of how severely restricted humanitarian access and the lack of a lasting ceasefire, 11 months on, will magnify otherwise avoidable and preventable human suffering, and make delivering humanitarian assistance to those in need extremely difficult and inadequate at best.”
Overcrowding at displacement sites, lack of access to clean water, and lack of access to basic hygiene supplies have all contributed to the rapid spread of various preventable diseases, including polio. The disease was eliminated from the Gaza Strip a quarter of a century ago but has reemerged during the current conflict which has seen the systematic destruction of the healthcare system, the obliteration of sewage and water infrastructure, as well as increased restrictions on the entry of fuel needed to pump out and safely dispose of wastewater.
Over 1.6 million doses of the vaccine will be delivered to Gaza to stop the outbreak. There will be two vaccination rounds; the first started on 1 September, while the second is also planned for later this month after a seven-day break.
The polio virus was first detected in July 2024 in six wastewater samples collected in June from various locations in Khan Younis and Deir al-Balah. Since then, three children presenting with suspected acute flaccid paralysis (AFP), a common symptom of polio, have been reported in the Gaza Strip. They were confirmed to have contracted polio after the results of their stool samples, which had been sent to Jordan for analysis, tested positive for type 1 poliovirus.
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