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The United Nations secretary general, António Guterres, called on Friday for a weeklong cease-fire in Gaza to allow vaccinations to prevent an outbreak of polio, saying that many children were at risk. He spoke just a few hours before the first case of polio in the enclave in many years was confirmed in a statement from the Gaza health ministry.
“Preventing and containing the spread of polio will take a massive, coordinated and urgent effort,” Mr. Guterres said, adding, “It is impossible to conduct a polio vaccination campaign with war raging all over.” He also warned that the disease could spread to neighboring countries if it were not quickly contained.
Polio is a highly infectious disease that mostly affects young children, attacking the nervous system and potentially leading to spinal and respiratory paralysis, and in some cases death. The virus that causes it was found circulating in wastewater in Gaza in July.
Children are estimated to make up about half of Gaza’s population of some 2.2 million, and the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics estimated in May that more than 340,000 were under the age of 5. The Global Polio Eradication Initiative, a public-private partnership led by the World Health Organization, said that vaccination rates were high until the war began more than 10 months ago.
According to the World Health Organization, the disease has existed since prehistoric times, and has been eradicated in much of the world since vaccination campaigns began in the 1950s. Its resurgence in Gaza — which the United Nations said had been polio-free for 25 years — reflects the destruction of the territory’s waste and water systems, which, along with malnourishment bordering on famine, has caused a multitude of grave health threats for Palestinians sealed in the territory. After the virus was found in the enclave’s wastewater, the Israeli military said it would begin vaccinating soldiers in Gaza.
The W.H.O. and UNICEF, the U.N. agency for children, have also called for a pause in the war to conduct vaccinations in Gaza. The Israeli agency that oversees policy for the Palestinian territories, known as COGAT, said in a weekly update on its activities on Friday that it would be working with the W.H.O. and UNICEF on the vaccination campaign.
The polio virus has been detected in wastewater samples in Khan Younis, in southern Gaza, and Deir al Balah, in the central part of the strip, both of which hold large populations of displaced Palestinians on the run from Israeli airstrikes.
The war has led to a drop in routine immunization coverage for the second dose of inactivated polio vaccine — going from 99 percent in 2022 to less than 90 percent in the first quarter of 2024, according to the Global Polio Eradication Initiative. This drop increased the risk of children contracting vaccine-preventable diseases, including polio, the group said in a statement on Friday joining the call for a truce for vaccinations.
The risk of polio spreading in Gaza, and internationally, the initiative’s statement said, is “high given gaps in children’s immunity due to disruptions in routine vaccination, decimation of the health system, constant population displacement, malnutrition and severely damaged water and sanitation systems.”
Gazan health officials said on Friday that “a number of children” had been seen with symptoms consistent with polio and that lab testing had revealed one of them was infected with the polio virus.
Mr. Guterres said that the United Nations was ready to begin an expansive vaccination effort that would focus on more than 640,000 children under the age of 10 in Gaza. He said that the W.H.O. had approved the release of 1.6 million doses of polio vaccines and that medical teams from UNRWA, the U.N. agency for Palestinians, would administer them. The Gaza health ministry said it was working with the W.H.O., UNICEF and other organizations to prepare.
The vaccination campaign would involve giving recipients two rounds of injections, Mr. Guterres said. The effort would include 708 teams at hospitals and primary health care centers and involve 316 community outreach teams throughout Gaza, he said.
Carrying out such a large-scale operation would require a number of complicated arrangements: safety and access for both medical workers and vaccine recipients; the availability of equipment for the refrigeration of vaccines; fuel; cash; and internet and mobile services, Mr. Guterres said.
In a statement on Friday, Hamas said it supported the United Nations’ request for a seven-day truce for vaccinations and also demanded “the delivery of medicine and food to more than two million Palestinians trapped in the Gaza Strip.”
Among the other diseases spreading in the enclave is hepatitis A. More than 100,000 people in Gaza have contracted acute jaundice syndrome, or suspected hepatitis A, since the war between Hamas and Israel began, the W.H.O. said in July. In the developed world, hepatitis A is relatively rare, and often not very serious. But in chaotic and crowded places with poor sanitation and malnutrition, it becomes much more common and dangerous.
Since the war began, aid workers have also warned of the possibility of an epidemic of cholera, which could quickly lead to mass mortality, but so far none has materialized.
