WHO sees ‘high risk’ of poliovirus spreading across Gaza and beyond enclave’s borders

The World Health Organization says there is a high risk of the poliovirus spreading across the Gaza Strip and beyond its borders due to the dire health and sanitation situation in the war-ravaged Palestinian enclave.

Ayadil Saparbekov, team lead for health emergencies at WHO in Gaza and the West Bank, says circulating vaccine-derived poliovirus type 2 had been isolated from environmental samples from sewage in Gaza.

“There is a high risk of spreading of the circulating vaccine-derived polio virus in Gaza, not only because of the detection but because of the very dire situation with the water sanitation,” he tells reporters in Geneva via video link from Jerusalem.

“It may also spill over internationally, at a very high point,” he says.

Saparbekov says WHO and UNICEF workers are scheduled to arrive in Gaza tomorrow to collect human stool samples as part of a risk assessment related to the discovery of the virus.

He says the assessment, which he hopes will be completed by the end of the week, will allow health officials to issue recommendations, “including the need for a mass vaccination campaign as well as what kind of vaccine should be used and what the age group of the population that will need to be vaccinated.”

Earlier this week, the Israel Defense Forces said it launched a program to vaccinate soldiers operating in Gaza and that it is working to facilitate the entry of vaccines into the Strip.