UN Health Agency Says Ther is a High Risk of Polio Spread in Gaza

Palestinian refugee camps in southern Gaza. (UNRWA/Hussein Owda)

JAKARTA - The United Nations health agency said on Tuesday there was a high risk of poliovirus spreading in the Gaza Strip and beyond its borders, due to the poor health and sanitation situation in the war-torn Palestinian enclave.

Ayadil Saparbekov, head of the World Health Organization's (WHO) health emergencies team in Gaza and the West Bank, said vaccine-derived poliovirus type 2 had been isolated from environmental samples from sewage in Gaza.

"There is a high risk of vaccine-derived poliovirus circulating in Gaza, not only because of the detection but because of the very poor water sanitation situation," he told reporters in Geneva via video link from Jerusalem, as reported by Reuters on July 24.

"It may also spread internationally, at a very high level," he added.

Saparbekov said WHO and UNICEF workers were due to arrive in Gaza on Thursday to collect human stool samples as part of a risk assessment related to the discovery of the virus.

He said the assessment, which is expected to be completed by the end of this week, will allow health officials to make recommendations, “including the need for a mass vaccination campaign and what type of vaccine should be used and the age groups of the population that should be vaccinated.”

Poliomyelitis, which is spread primarily through the fecal-oral route, is a highly contagious virus that can attack the nervous system and cause paralysis. It mainly affects children under the age of 5.

Earlier, the Israeli military said on Sunday it would begin offering polio vaccines to soldiers serving in the Gaza Strip, after traces of infectious poliovirus were found in test samples in the coastal enclave.

The military also said that in cooperation with international groups, enough vaccines had been brought in to cover more than a million people in Gaza, which has a total population of about 2.3 million.

Without adequate health services, Gaza's population is highly vulnerable to disease outbreaks, public health officials and aid groups say.

"I am very worried about the outbreaks that are happening in Gaza. And it's not just polio, there are outbreaks of other infectious diseases," Saparbekov said.