“Suddenly, he stopped crawling, stopped moving, stopped standing up, and stopped sitting.” That is how Nevine Abu El-Jedian described what happened to her son. Abdel-Rahman was 10 months old, an early crawler, until one day his left leg appeared paralyzed.
On 22 August 2024, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus announced that the child, an unvaccinated infant from Deir al-Balah, had been confirmed to have polio. No case had been recorded in the territory for 25 years. Genomic sequencing linked the virus to variant poliovirus type 2, the same type detected earlier in Gaza’s wastewater. The baby’s lower left leg was paralyzed, and his condition was stable.
The family behind the case
Abdel-Rahman was born just before 7 October, when the war began and his family of 10 fled the northern town of Beit Lahiya. They moved from shelter to shelter and ended up in a tent in Deir al-Balah. Routine vaccination of newborns, the Associated Press reported, had all but stopped as hospitals came under attack. “My son was not vaccinated because of the continued displacement,” his mother said. She described a camp with no medication and no supplements, among piles of garbage and sewage running through the streets. Aid workers call such places breeding grounds for polio, which spreads through fecal matter.
The WHO notes that behind each paralysis case, hundreds more people are probably infected without symptoms. There is no cure. Paralysis is usually permanent, and it can kill when it reaches the muscles used for breathing. Before the war, most Gaza children had their shots. Health workers had warned for months that an outbreak was coming, and the WHO had said the virus reaching thousands of unprotected children was “just a matter of time.” Two more children with paralysis had been reported, and their stool samples were sent to a lab in Jordan.
Racing the virus
Tedros said Palestinian health officials, the WHO and UNICEF planned two vaccination rounds over the following weeks. To make that possible, the WHO announced three-day humanitarian pauses in the fighting, which Israel had approved. The aim was to reach more than 640,000 children aged under 10. WHO’s deputy chief, Michael Ryan, told the UN Security Council that 1.26 million doses of oral vaccine had been delivered, with some 400,000 more still to come.
Vaccines alone were not the whole answer. Philippe Lazzarini, who leads the UN refugee agency for Palestinians, said it was “not enough to bring the vaccines into Gaza and protect the cold chain” and that they must reach “the mouths of every child under the age of 10.” Only 11 facilities in Gaza could maintain the cold chain. Gaza’s deputy health minister, Yousef Abu al-Reesh, said that only a full cease-fire would let enough children be reached.
UNICEF spokesperson Ammar Ammar was direct about the odds: “Without the polio pause or ceasefire, it would be impossible.”
Sources
- Baby in Gaza paralysed due to polio as region records first case of the disease in 25 years
- Polio vaccines arrive in Gaza after first case in 25 years
- Arab News | A 10-month-old Palestinian baby suddenly stopped crawling. Polio had struck Gaza
