Palestinian health officials on Friday reported the first case of polio in an unvaccinated 10-month old-child in the Gaza city of Deir al-Balah.
FILE - Palestinians displaced by the Israeli air and ground offensive on the Gaza Strip walk next a dark streak of sewage flowing into the streets of the southern town of Khan Younis, Gaza Strip, Thursday, July 4, 2024. Health authorities and aid agencies are racing to avert an outbreak of polio in the Gaza Strip after the virus was detected in the territory's wastewater and three cases with a suspected polio symptom have been reported.
The potentially fatal, paralyzing disease mostly strikes children under age 5 and typically spreads through contaminated water. Pakistan and Afghanistan are the only countries where the spread of polio has never been stopped.did not immediately respond to requests to confirm the case. However, U.N. health and children’s agencies have called for seven-day pauses in the fighting, starting at the end of August, to vaccinate 640,000 Palestinian children against polio.
In July, the World Health Organization said a variant of type 2 was discovered in wastewater samples from southern Khan Younis and central Deir al-Balah, and linked to a variant of the polio virus last detected in Egypt in 2023. The WHO said more than 1.6 million doses of the polio vaccine are expected to arrive in Gaza by the end of August, in time for the vaccination campaigns, which would have to be conducted in two rounds. Children under 10 will be given two drops of the oral vaccine against type 2 of the polio virus.
Polio Health Officials Children Vaccine War Israel-Hamas Water
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