Israel are driving a POLIO epidemic in Gaza.

Right, so the repeated targeting of water and sewage systems in Gaza was always going to lead to inevitable conclusions. Lack of clean drinking water, lack of sanitary conditions, well this is a situation that will kill people a lot faster than the Israeli army can and was something I discussed a short while ago following the Lancet report suggesting the official death toll in Gaza, around 39,000 as it currently is, is probably somewhere in the region of a four-fold underestimation of actual figures.
The Lancet is one of the foremost and oldest medical journals in the world and one aspect of that death toll, arguably what would be the largest cause of death in the region, is going to be the spread of disease. In unsanitary regions, the spread of dysentery and gastroenteritis, due to the unsanitary conditions in Rafah particularly, where much of the Gazan population is still trapped is rife, the situation has become so severe the rise of hepatitis A in the region has made the news, 1000 cases of that being declared each week, but now thing have become so dire, that a disease the world is trying to eradicate, that some might even consider a thing of the past, is now spreading at a horrifying rate throughout Gaza such that the Gaza Ministry of Health has declared an epidemic. Polio has returned to Gaza.
Right, so Polio. Many of us Gen X’ers might remember getting a horrible tasting bitter droplet on a sugar cube as a child, I certainly do, these days it’s part of the more standard vaccination program, that was our vaccine against Polio, a disease the World Health Organisation declared a plan to eradicate from existence all the way back in 1988. It was just 11 years after that, in 1999, that Gaza was able to declare itself Polio free and has remained ever thusly. Until now. Polio has now been found in 7 areas of the Gaza Strip, in the waste water, and given that Israel has destroyed so much water and sanitation infrastructure throughout Gaza, it should come as little surprise that it is spreading again, spread via ingestion of fecal matter and less commonly, but certainly the more likely explanation in Gaza, through contaminated water.
Since 1988, cases of Polio worldwide have decreased by 99%, such has been the success of the WHO Global Polio Eradication Initiative. In 1988, there were 350,000 cases of Polio worldwide declared that year, across 125 countries. By 2021, that fell to just 6. Of the three types of Polio that existed in 1988, types 1, 2 and 3, type 2 was eradicated in 1999 and type 3 officially wiped out in 2020. Type 1 polio remains, but exists in only Pakistan and Afghanistan to this day, again, areas of conflict going back years that have hindered Polio elimination. We genuinely could have eradicated it by now if not for global conflicts. Now, that is the claim made by WHO itself on their polio page on their official website, I’ll come back to that in a moment.
Now, global vaccination programs have kept it from returning in other countries, but Israel has created the perfect conditions for it to manage a return in Gaza.
The war on Polio, now essentially hinges on ending the war in Gaza, because eradication cannot continue, whilst Israel insist on exacerbating the conditions it needs to thrive.
Now here’s what I found really scary when I was researching all of this – Israel says it has identified which Polio type is proving endemic in Gaza right now, and while you might assume it’s type 1, since the other 2 were eradicated, it’s not. Israel are claiming that it has evidence – and obviously I would want independent verification of anything Israel said, though even they have little reason to lie over something like this, but they claim that the variant spreading in Gaza, is type 2, supposedly wiped out 25 years ago. Now I thought, well that can’t be right, that’s also a bit coincidental, that’s the same time Gaza allegedly became free of Polio, is there a connection? So this time I took a look at the page of the Polio Global Eradication Initiative, which the WHO website page actually linked to and it turns out – it’s rather confusing – but the type 2 Israel are talking about is actually type 2 polio, amongst what are called circulating vaccine-derived Polioviruses. Whereas it’s true that so-called wild polio type 2 was eradicated in 1999, this domesticated version if you like, cVDPV, of which we’re talking about type 2 of, are derived due to poor vaccination rates. We end up with a mutated version of the wild type, which still responds to vaccination I hasten to add, but it requires a concerted effort and vaccination program to eradicate and therefore to get on top of this, Israel’s war must end before it spreads further. I thought since I got confused researching this I’d lay it out in the manner of which I got confused by it, hopefully to clarify what the actual lay of the land is, truly stop numbering these things, it’s confusing!
Israel’s response to this though? Offer vaccines to their own soldiers. So what? Hope by doing that you can contain it behind the walls you built all around Gaza and let the virus do it’s worst? How is that targeting Hamas? What about your hostages held there? There are 10,000 patients in Gaza so seriously ill they need to be removed for treatment elsewhere, but Israel won’t allow that, in fact since they took illegal control of the Rafah Border Crossing back in May, only 23 people have been allowed to leave through it. Now there is a risk of Polio spreading beyond Gaza, will Israel clamp down even further? These people need treatment elsewhere, Polio will drive up demand on hospitals, but is this not just doing what the likes of Netanyahu want? That the likes of the Lancet predicted and were ridiculed for by Pro Israeli spokespeople?
To my mind this is playing with fire. If you have an endemic disease spreading unchecked, because you won’t allow vaccines in, won’t allow WHO to do what needs doing, won’t stop the war to bring under control a disease which although may only be a sore throat and a fever for some, can mean paralysis or death for others and predominantly children at that? One that is so easily preventable at that? It’s a childhood disease of course, but the population of so many in Gaza, 50% of the population being under 18, means it is the perfect breeding grounds for this to really take hold in a way that has not been seen in decades and all as a direct result of Israel’s occupation and genocide. We’re talking over 1m people there.
Can Israel be so sure they can contain it? Will it spread to the Israeli population? Israel didn’t say they were MAKING their soldiers take the vaccine, just that it was being offered. It only takes one vaccine averse soldier to carry it into Israel, where sure they can treat these things much more readily, but that isn’t the point. Also, what of the humanitarian workers there? Where could they potentially take such a virus or indeed become sick or infected with any of the other number of diseases increasingly taking hold too? It’s not likely, and a doctor who spoke to Al-Jazeera, bore that sentiment in this excerpt:
‘Dr Tanya Haj-Hassan, a paediatric intensive care physician, told Al Jazeera in an interview earlier this month that the presence of the polio virus in sewage was a “ticking time bomb”.
“Normally if you have a case of polio, you’re going to isolate them, you’re going to make sure that they use a bathroom that nobody else uses, make sure that they’re not in close proximity to other people, [but] that’s impossible,” she said.
“You have everybody clustering in refugee camps at the moment without vaccines for at least the past nine months, including children who would otherwise have been vaccinated for polio and adults who, in the setting of an outbreak, should receive a booster, including healthcare workers.”’
The World Health Organisation is planning to send 1m vaccines to Gaza in the coming weeks, but that will rely on Israel letting them in, allowing them to be distributed, stop bombing Gaza to allow distribution to be done, when its more likely, like so many goods, like so many medical supplies, they’ll be held up at the border unable to get in. I’m minded to recall all those amputations and operations we’ve seen imagery of, or read stories about where they’ve been conducted without anaesthetic, because Israel wouldn’t allow it in. How is this any different? The UN has a responsibility here and now to make sure that it gets in. If this spreads, if it gets worse, the inaction on their part now will be unforgivable. WHO operate under the remit of the UN Economic & Social Council, they can step in here, I’d argue this is a security matter too. Israel can’t be trusted to allow vaccination in Gaza to happen, and obviously it needs to.
More than ever the work of URWA and other aid agencies is needed, yet still they come under attack and although the UK has now restored UNRWA funding finally, it’s not the end of the issues there as this video recommendation will tell you all about and I’ll hopefully catch you on the next vid. Cheers folks.