Gaza residents need polio vaccine in ‘death spiral’ of hunger, heat and disease, UN aid agencies say
Nearly 10 months of war and intense Israeli bombing have destroyed Gaza’s health care system and disrupted routine vaccinations for children, leaving them exposed to many preventable diseases, including polio, a disease that the United Nations’ World Health Organization (WHO) has banned.WHO) was confirmed last month in several wastewater samples taken from Gaza.
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Speaking to journalists in Geneva, WHO spokesman Christian Lindmeier said a ceasefire would be the “best” solution, before calling for at least keeping roads in the enclave open and ensuring the safe passage of medical and other aid supplies. “Otherwise, the vaccines will end up like many other trucks on the other side of the border, or on the Rafah side or at other checkpoints inside… or outside Gaza,” he said, a week after the UN health agency announced it would send one million polio vaccines to the Gaza Strip.
According to WHO, no cases of paralysis have been reported to date.
The United Nations Children’s Fund says that if children are fully vaccinated, the risk of contracting polio is “negligible” (UNICEF) spokesman James Elder. He stressed that vaccination rates were “very high” before the war broke out in response to Hamas-led terrorist attacks on multiple targets in southern Israel that killed about 1,250 people and took more than 250 hostages. “But the mass displacement, the destruction of health infrastructure, the extremely unstable operating environment, all of that makes things much more difficult, so it puts more and more children at risk,” he said, adding that vaccination rates are now around 89 percent — “so you have this increased risk to children.”
Water emergency
Condemning the reported destruction last week of a vital water treatment station in the southern city of Rafah, Mr Elder further highlighted the health risks this poses to Gazans, now that it has been “destroyed… This is another grim reminder of these attacks on families who are already in dire need of water,” he said.
The Gaza Strip still lacks water.
Today, across Gaza, the average water intake has dropped to between two and nine litres per person, per day, when the minimum should be 15 litres, Mr Elder continued. “Somehow people are still trying, but of course we are now in a deadly cycle where children are severely malnourished, temperatures are rising, there is a lack of water, there is a severe lack of sanitation and that is the cycle. On top of that, of course, there is a very, very active conflict.”
Key cities targeted for evacuation
In its latest update issued late Monday, the United Nations aid coordination office, OCHA, speak that more than 200,000 people in Gaza – nine percent of the population – have been forcibly displaced under Israeli evacuation orders.
The directives issued by Israeli authorities on Saturday and Sunday affected Rafah, Khan Younis and Deir Al-Balah “where a total of 56,000 people are sheltering”, OCHA said, before warning that the development came “at a time when water, sanitation and hygiene conditions are further eroding in Gaza, with infectious diseases on the rise”.
