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The problem with polio that was detected in a 10-month old baby in Gaza this week is that the virus could infect others –unless and until at least 95% of children under age five receive the IPV shot. There were at least 50,000 children born in Gaza over the last ten months, including the one sick with polio. It is likely not one child born in the last ten months received the anti-polio shot. Yet prior to Oct. 7, there had not been a case of polio in Gaza for 25 years; most children had been immunized.
3-Day Humanitarian Ceasefire…
Organizations such as Save the Children, UNICEF and UNRWA have enough vaccine. But they cannot get the vaccine into children’s arms without Israel stopping its aggression, killing, targeting missiles on the civilian population of Gaza. Or at least Israel must guarantee safe passage for all to and from the thirteen remaining (out of 36) partially standing hospitals and future injection clinics to allow two rounds necessary of the vaccine. The goal is to vaccinate at least 640,000 children in the first round, and 400,000 in the second.
The European Union’s Foreign Policy Chief Josep Borrellsaid in a post on X:
“I urge an immediate 3-day humanitarian ceasefire to enable vaccination by WHO (the World Health Organisation) and UNICEF (the UN’s children fund) – independent of wider negotiations. Our humanity demands it.”
Palestinian children are evacuated from a site hit by an Israeli bombardment on Khan Younis, southern Gaza Strip, Saturday, July 13, 2024. Israel said it targeted Hamas’ shadowy military commander in a massive strike Saturday in the crowded southern Gaza Strip that killed at least 71 people, according to local health officials. (AP Photo/Jehad Alshrafi)
But the problem is clear:
Israel will not stop the bombing, the killing and the snipers firing on civilians in Gaza.
Now, more than 89% of Palestinians are living under evacuation orders
Many are moving to the sand near the sea because, with millions living on the streets in central and southern Gaza, there is no place to lie down even on the streets.
The only kind of vaccine that is now used is the IPV (inactivated polio vaccine), first developed and doled out to children from 1955. But the IPV vaccine needs to be transported in refrigerated trucks – which Israel will not typically allow into Gaza.
The oral polio vaccine (OPV), which many of us received as children, is called the Sabin vaccine. The Sabin vaccine is a live, weakened vaccine in a liquid which is sipped from a tiny cup. But by 1996, scientists noted that in one in 2.4 million Sabin recipients came down with polio. So for 25 years, the liquid vaccine –though easier to administer than an injection — has not been routinely used.
In order to immunize 650,000 children two times, parents must be safe enough to attend a clinic with their children. A ceasefire is crucial.
Polio is easily transmissible – through touching fecal matter, not washing hands, sneezing and coughing. Most people in Gaza have no access to clean water to drink or wash. Most people in Gaza have no access to a toilet (one per 4,000 people) so there is raw sewage on streets, amidst garbage, soiled diapers and in impure water everywhere. For months there has been no rain – no chance to catch clean rainwater to drink, for instance.
The incubation of polio is three to six days; the onset of paralysis happens in seven to 21 days.
In Canada, children are routinely immunized against polio at ages two months, four months, six months, 18 months and finally between four and six years of age. Imagine if you lived in Gaza and your baby had never had the chance to be vaccinated. This is a public health catastrophe, make no mistake.
Image at the top: Jehad Alshrafi/Copyright 2023, The AP.
