The little boy was born last autumn, just before the war between Hamas and Israel broke out.
Despite war and food shortages, the baby was full of energy, and he started crawling early. But suddenly it was as if the trend turned.
– Suddenly he stopped crawling and moving. He stopped standing and sitting, his mother, Nevine Abu El-Jedian, told the AP news agency.
Health workers had been warning for several months that the dreaded polio virus was about to spread in the Gaza Strip. Now Abdel-Rahman had become the first confirmed victim of the disease.
Was not vaccinated
Polio can cause permanent paralysis in the body of those infected. Abdel-Rahman is apparently paralyzed in his left leg.
Since the boy was born just before the Hamas-led attack on Israel last year, he was never vaccinated against the disease. The war has led to a massive humanitarian crisis, and much of the building mass in the Gaza Strip has been left in ruins. Many hospitals have also been attacked by Israeli forces.
Israel claims Hamas and other armed groups operate from health facilities in the area, which Hamas denies.
Since large parts of the healthcare system collapsed, almost all vaccinations of newborns stopped.
In addition, many residents have been repeatedly ordered to evacuate areas that Israel has planned to attack.
Surrounded by trash
– My son was not vaccinated because of the constant movements, says Nevine Abu El-Jedian.
Before the outbreak of war, the family lived in the town of Beit Lahiya, in the north of the Gaza Strip. They had to move repeatedly before they ended up in a tent in the town of Deir al-Balah, which is roughly in the middle of the enclave.
Like many Gazans, the Abu El-Jedian family lives in an overcrowded tent camp, surrounded by piles of garbage and dirty sewage and sewage spilling into the streets.
– We live here in a tent under such conditions that there is no medicine, no aids, no nutritional supplements, says the polio-affected boy’s mother.
Spreading in secret
Between the piles of rubbish in the tent camp, diseases such as polio have good growing conditions. The poliovirus is spread, among other things, through faeces.
Although some of those infected become very seriously ill, the vast majority of carriers of the virus do not experience any symptoms. This means that the virus can spread almost unnoticed through the population for a while.
Before the outbreak of war, the vast majority of children in the Gaza Strip were vaccinated against polio. The last time someone was infected by the disease in the Palestinian area was 25 years ago.
The World Health Organization (WHO) has long worked to eradicate polio worldwide. But the effort has only almost succeeded. It is difficult to vaccinate all children in poor and conflict-affected countries, and in a few countries the disease still exists.
An additional challenge is that one of the most common vaccines can in some very rare cases infect people with the virus that they are actually supposed to protect against.
Start vaccination
In addition to Abdel-Rahman, there are at least two other children with paralysis in the Gaza Strip, according to the WHO.
To stop the outbreak, 95 percent of the population must be vaccinated, according to the UN organization. Uncontrolled spread of polio in Gaza will also be a threat to neighboring countries and other countries in the Middle East.
The WHO stated on Thursday that Israel had agreed to humanitarian pauses in the hostilities to ensure that the population of Gaza can be vaccinated. 1.2 million doses of vaccine have already been transported into the Palestinian territory, and at the weekend a massive campaign to vaccinate over 640,000 children began.
Vaccination starts in areas south and north of the Gaza Strip. Here the warfare is to be suspended for three days.
– We emphasize the importance of all parties complying with the promises that have been made, said Deputy Secretary-General of the WHO Michael Ryan in the UN Security Council recently.
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2024-09-02 17:40:15
