War-battered Gaza Faces Uphill Battle Against Polio

The Gaza Strip's first recorded polio case in 25 years has health workers and aid agencies grappling with the steep obstacles to conducting mass vaccination in the war-torn Palestinian territory.

Unrelenting airstrikes by Israel more than 10 months into its war against Hamas, restrictions of aid entering the besieged territory and hot summer temperatures all threaten the viability of a life-saving inoculation drive.

Still, equipment to support the extensive campaign -- which UN agencies say could start on August 31 -- has already arrived in the region.

The Palestinian health ministry in the occupied West Bank said last week that tests in Jordan had confirmed polio in an unvaccinated 10-month-old baby from central Gaza, AFP reported.

According to the United Nations, Gaza had not registered a case for 25 years, although type 2 poliovirus was detected in samples collected from the territory's wastewater in June.

Poliovirus is highly infectious, and most often spread through sewage and contaminated water -- an increasingly common problem in Gaza as the Israel-Hamas war drags on.

The disease mainly affects children under the age of five. It can cause deformities and paralysis, and is potentially fatal.
UN bodies the World Health Organization (WHO) and children's agency UNICEF say the have detailed plans to vaccinate 640,000 children across Gaza.

But a major challenge remains Israel's devastating military campaign, after Hamas's October 7 attack.

"It's extremely difficult to undertake a vaccination campaign of this scale and volume under a sky full of air strikes," said Juliette Touma, director of communications for the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA.

Under the UN plan, 2,700 health workers in 708 teams would take part, with the WHO overseeing the effort, said Richard Peeperkorn, the agency's representative in the Palestinian territories.
UNICEF would ensure the cold supply chain as vaccines are brought into and distributed across Gaza, spokesman Jonathan Crickx said.

Cold chain components including refrigerators arrived Wednesday at Israel's main international airport.

Some 1.6 million doses of the oral vaccine would follow, and are expected to enter Gaza on Sunday via the Kerem Shalom crossing, Crickx said.

The UN agencies plan to administer two doses each for about 95 percent of children under 10 in Gaza, according to Crickx. Surplus doses would cover expected losses to heat or other causes.

While Israel has repeatedly dismissed claims it was blocking aid into Gaza, relief workers have long complained of the many obstacles they face in getting supplies into the territory, which has suffered severe shortages of everything from fuel and medical equipment to food.

And once in Gaza, fighting, widespread devastation and crumbling infrastructure all complicate delivery and safe access.

Touma, who worked on polio response during wars in Iraq and Syria, said that "the return of polio to a place where it's been eradicated says quite a lot."

Israel's military campaign since October 7 has killed at least 40,223 people in Gaza.

Gaza's health care system has been decimated, with "only 16 out of 36 hospitals... still functioning, and only partially," Crickx said.

Out of those, only 11 facilities are capable of maintaining the cold chain, he added.

The vaccines would first be kept at a UN storage space in central Gaza, and then distributed to public and private health facilities as well as UNRWA shelters "hopefully by refrigerated trucks if we can find some, otherwise by cold boxes" filled with ice packs, Crickx said.
Many Gazans now live in makeshift camps or UNRWA schools, making them hard to reach, said Moussa Abed, director of primary health care at the Gaza health ministry.

Nearly all of the territory's 2.4 million people have been displaced at least once during the war.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has called for two seven-day breaks in the war to administer doses.

Abed said that "without a safe environment for the vaccination campaign, we will not be able to reach 95 percent of the children under the age of 10, which is the goal of this campaign."

Shahed Abu Omar, 20, was in her third year studying computer science at Gaza’s Al Azhar University when it was reduced to rubble by Israel's military campaign in the Palestinian territory.

She is now one of 90,000 university students left stranded in a war with no end in sight that has damaged or destroyed all 12 of the higher education institutions in the Gaza Strip, according to Palestinian official data.

However, Abu Omar is determined to keep studying, braving a perilous daily journey to reach a stable internet connection that allows her to learn online.

"We cannot go to our university or study away from it," she said, alluding to the difficulty of remote learning with such poor internet connection.

Perched in the rubble of a destroyed house, Abu Omar studies from her mobile phone. Her mother, Hanin Sarour, said they had come to the area to reach an internet connection. The connection, vital to downloading pre-recorded lectures and communicating with professors, was still weak, she said. “Every step is dangerous and difficult,” Sarour added.

Most of Abu Omar's professors are in the Gaza Strip as well, she said, facing the same difficulties their students do.

Abu Omar's final exams are in just two weeks. She fears she will only fall further behind. “I am sure we will lose more than the year that we’ve lost already,” she said.

She dreams of returning to university, sitting in a classroom, and meeting with professors and friends.

The war, now in its 11th month, has also interrupted education for Gaza’s estimated 625,000 school-aged children, leaving them unable to attend classes.

The uncertainty for Abu Omar and students across the small coastal enclave is likely to persist. Even after the war ends, students do not know when universities will reopen, she said.

Despite all the difficulties, Abu Omar will continue to study in the hopes of not losing a whole year. “We are trying to achieve something,” she said.

War-battered Gaza Faces Uphill Battle Against Polio