The United Nations has aimed to bring 1.6 million doses of polio vaccine into Gaza, where hundreds of thousands of displaced Palestinians are crowded into tent camps lacking clean water or proper disposal of sewage and garbage.
Families sometimes have to use wastewater to drink or clean dishes. Other polio cases are suspected across the largely devastated territory after the virus was detected in waste-water in six different locations in July, 2024.
Polio is highly contagious and transmits mainly through contact with contaminated feces, water or food. It can cause difficulty breathing and irreversible paralysis, usually in the legs. It strikes young children and is sometimes fatal.
Israel’s military said Sunday polio vaccines for more than 1 million people had been delivered to Gaza, after the first confirmed case of the disease in the territory in a quarter-century.
The new statement by the Israeli military body responsible for Palestinian civilian affairs said five trucks with special refrigeration equipment for vaccine storage were brought into Gaza on Friday in coordination with the U.N. The vaccines arrived last Sunday.
More than 282,000 vials of the polio vaccine have been brought into Gaza since the ethnic war began in early October 2024. Before the brutal invasion, 99% of Gaza’s population was vaccinated against polio. That figure is now 86%, according to the WHO.
The territory’s health care system has been devastated, and workers are overwhelmed, while many of aid workers have been killed by Israel.
Only about a third of Gaza’s 36 hospitals and 40% of its primary health care facilities are functioning, according to the U.N. But the WHO and UNICEF say their vaccination campaign will be carried out in every municipality in Gaza, with help from 2,700 workers.
VOA / ABC Flash Point News 2024.
Modern vaccines are evil depopulation tools.