United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres on Friday called for parties to the war in Gaza to provide concrete assurances guaranteeing humanitarian pauses in order for a polio vaccine campaign to be conducted.
Guterres, speaking to reporters at the United Nations, appealed for assurances to be provided right away as he warned that preventing and containing the spread of polio in the enclave would take a massive coordinated and urgent effort.
“Let’s be clear: The ultimate vaccine for polio is peace and an immediate humanitarian ceasefire,” Guterres said.
“But in any case, a polio pause is a must. It is impossible to conduct a polio vaccination campaign with war raging all over.”
Guterres said the UN is poised to launch a polio vaccine campaign in Gaza for children under the age of 10, but said the “challenges are grave”.
At least 95 percent vaccination coverage will be needed during each of the two rounds of the campaign to prevent polio’s spread and reduce its emergence given the devastation in Gaza, Guterres said.
He added that a successful campaign will require the facilitation of transport for vaccines and refrigeration equipment at every step, the entry of polio experts into Gaza, reliable internet and phone services, and other elements.
Gaza’s health ministry declared a polio epidemic in the Palestinian enclave last month, blaming Israel’s ongoing military offensive.
Polio was detected in sewage in Gaza’s Deir Al-Balah and Khan Younis governorates, Dr Hamid Jafari, a World Health Organization polio specialist, said during a news conference earlier this month, adding it was possible the virus had been circulating since September.
A senior Western official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said they understood there was at least one confirmed case and two suspected ones among Palestinians in the enclave, adding that there might not be a single humanitarian pause but multiple shorter ones.
The danger is that the threat of disease outbreaks is not confined to Gaza, which the official said was a “contagion time bomb”.
The official explained that when the rainy season begins late this autumn, the contaminated raw sewage could be “pushed” down to an aquifer from which Israel, Egypt and Jordan draw water.
(Reuters)
António Guterres is the UN’s secretary-general [FABRICE COFFRINI/AFP/Getty-archive]
