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Garbage piles up along an out-of-use sewage dump in Gaza City in May.
CNN
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The highly infectious polio virus has been detected in sewage samples in Gaza, putting thousands of Palestinians at risk of contracting a disease that can cause paralysis.
Both the Gaza Health Ministry and the World Health Organization (WHO) said they had carried out tests and found samples of the virus in sewage.
“Poliovirus type 2 (VDPV2) was identified at six locations in sewage samples collected on 23 June in Khan Younis and Deir al Balah,” WHO said on Friday.
The WHO said the findings were linked to the “dire health situation” created by Israel’s brutal military assault on Gaza since the Hamas attacks on October 7.
“It is important to note that the virus has only been isolated from the environment to date; no cases of associated paralysis have been detected,” WHO added. It added that no one had yet been treated in Gaza for paralysis or other polio symptoms, but that residents were now “facing the threat” posed by the disease.
Several UN agencies – including UNICEF, the UN Children’s Fund, and UNRWA, the Palestinian refugee agency – are working with local health authorities to determine how far the virus has spread.
WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said polio vaccination rates before the conflict were “optimal” but that Israel’s war against Hamas had created “the perfect environment for diseases like polio to spread.”
“The decimation of the health system, lack of security, obstruction of access, constant displacement of populations, shortages of medical supplies, poor water quality and weakening sanitation facilities increase the risk of vaccine-preventable diseases, including polio,” Tedros warned.
The Palestinian Health Ministry in Gaza has called for practices to improve hygiene and safety.
“The detection of the virus responsible for polio in wastewater portends a real health catastrophe and exposes thousands of residents to the risk of contracting polio,” she said in a statement, demanding “an immediate end to the Israeli aggression.”
Wild polio was eradicated from Gaza more than 25 years ago, with pre-war vaccination coverage reaching 95% by 2022, according to the WHO.
Poliovirus can emerge when low vaccination coverage allows the weakened form of the virus strain in the oral vaccine to mutate into a stronger version capable of causing paralysis, a spokesperson for the WHO’s global polio eradication programme said.
Hospitals in central Gaza said more than 20 people were killed after two Israeli airstrikes on homes in the Nuseirat area. A CNN reporter on the scene said the majority of the victims were women and children.
CNN asked the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) about the reported strikes.
