LONDON July 26. 2024 (Saba) -The World Health Organization (WHO) announced that it will send more than one million doses of polio vaccine to the Gaza Strip, to prevent children from becoming infected after the virus was detected in wastewater samples.
WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said in an opinion piece in Britain's Guardian newspaper on Friday that the vaccines would be distributed over the coming weeks.
"While no polio cases have been recorded so far, without immediate action it will only be a matter of time before thousands of children who are rendered unprotected are infected."
Ghebreyesus wrote that children under the age of five are most at risk of contracting the virus, especially infants under the age of two, due to the disruption of normal vaccination campaigns as a result of the war of extermination that has been going on for about ten months.
Last week, UN agencies announced that the Global Polio Laboratory Network found the vaccine-derived poliovirus type 2 virus in six wastewater samples collected from environmental monitoring sites in the Gaza Strip on 23 July.
In addition to polio, the UN has announced a significant increase in cases of hepatitis A, dysentery and gastroenteritis as sanitary conditions in Gaza deteriorate due to sewage seeping into streets near some camps for displaced people.
E.M
resource : Saba