The World Health Organization is delivering more than one million polio vaccines to Gaza in the next weeks to prevent children from becoming infected.
This is after the virus was discovered in sewage samples, WHO Chief said on Friday.
While no cases of virus have been recorded yet, Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said it is only a matter of time before it reaches the thousands of children who have been left unprotected.
He claimed that children under the age of five were most vulnerable to the viral disease, particularly newborns under the age of two, because normal vaccination efforts had been halted for more than nine months due to conflict.
Poliomyelitis is a highly contagious virus that can enter the neurological system and cause paralysis. It spreads mostly through the fecal-oral pathway.
Polio cases have dropped by 99% globally since 1988 as a result of widespread vaccination campaigns, and efforts to eradicate disease are ongoing.
Israel’s military said on Sunday it would start offering the polio vaccine to soldiers serving in the Gaza Strip after remnants of the virus were found in test samples in the enclave.
Besides polio, the U.N. reported last week a widespread increase in cases of Hepatitis A, dysentery and gastroenteritis as sanitary conditions deteriorate in Gaza, with sewage spilling into the streets near some camps for displaced people.
