Mustafa Abu Luli, 53, sits under a tarp beside a pile of garbage in Khan Younis. His family of five was displaced from Rafah and has lived in a tent for months. Every one of them has a skin disease or rash, he told Mondoweiss. “We are terrified of the spread of polio, especially since we are close to the sewage where they discovered the disease,” he said.
The virus he fears was detected in mid-July 2024, when the Gaza health ministry and the World Health Organization (WHO) analyzed sewage samples. The ministry then declared a polio epidemic, which the WHO’s records place on July 29, and the WHO called for immediate intervention. The ministry described the outbreak as “a setback to the global polio eradication program” and said it threatened both Gaza and neighboring countries.
Doctors describe the conditions
Dr. Jamal al-Homs, director of the Kuwait Specialized Hospital in Rafah, told Mondoweiss that epidemic diseases are rising sharply across the strip. He tied the return of polio to the lack of a proper sewage system, clean drinking water and general hygiene. If it spreads, he said, nothing could stop it under current conditions.
Dr. Ahmad Al-Farra, head of pediatrics at the Nasser Medical Complex in Khan Younis, said polio would find a hospitable setting in crowded tent camps. “If one of the individuals is infected, the spread of the disease will be swift due to the severe crowding and sharing of public toilets among the displaced,” he said. He added that the vaccine needed against type 2 was not available because power cuts stop hospitals from storing it at the right temperature.
Dr. Yara M. Asi, a public health expert and co-director of the Palestine Program for Health and Human Rights, said polio vaccination across the Palestinian territories was about 99% before October 7 and had dropped to about 86%. The WHO’s own figures put Gaza at 99% in 2022 and 89% in 2023. “Polio is almost entirely preventable with vaccinations,” Asi said.
Vaccines and the first case
WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said the agency would send more than a million doses of polio vaccine to Gaza. Writing in The Guardian, he warned that without immediate action “it will only be a matter of time before thousands of children become infected”. Children under five are most at risk, he wrote, especially infants under two.
The warnings proved right. On August 16, tests in Jordan confirmed the first polio infection in Gaza, in the central city of Deir al-Balah. The patient was a 10-month-old baby, and the United Nations confirmed one case of paralysis.
On August 29, Israel gave a “preliminary commitment” to pauses in fighting so a vaccination campaign could go ahead. The WHO reported on September 12 that it had met its vaccination target for children in the strip. The Israeli military separately started a voluntary vaccination program for its soldiers.
Later rounds ran into trouble. A second round that began October 14, 2024 was delayed by heavy bombardment in northern Gaza. In early November, an Israeli drone reportedly struck the Sheikh Radwan Clinic, a polio vaccination site, and the WHO later said six people were injured, four of them children. UNICEF condemned the strike. A third round in February 2025, made possible by a ceasefire that let teams work in all five governorates at once, reached 602,795 children under ten.
Sources
- 2024 Gaza Strip polio outbreak – Wikipedia
- ‘An entirely preventable disaster’: Health officials warn of catastrophic polio epidemic in Gaza
Sources
- 2024 Gaza Strip polio epidemic – Wikipedia
- ‘An entirely preventable disaster’: Health officials warn of catastrophic…
