Mass polio vaccination campaign to continue in Gaza after virus detected in wastewater samples
A mass polio vaccination campaign is set to continue in Gaza after the virus was recently detected in wastewater samples.
The campaign aims to vaccinate more than 591,000 children in Gaza under 10 years old between Saturday and Feb. 26, the World Health Organization announced.
Efforts will be led by the Palestinian Ministry of Health and will be supported by the WHO, United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) and other partners, the global health agency said Wednesday.
Children are receiving two drops of novel oral polio vaccine type 2 (nOPV2), which has been used for outbreak response under the WHO's Emergency Use Listing Procedure (EUL) approval since March 2021. A second dose is typically given four weeks after the first.
The WHO coordinated two previous mass vaccination rounds in September and October 2024, saying it reached 95% of its target population in Gaza. The current campaign will aim to reach all children under age 10, including those previously missed to help close any immunity gaps, the WHO said.
At least 7,000 children were missed during the second vaccination round in October due to hostilities in the Israel-Hamas war and areas where humanitarian pauses for vaccination were not guaranteed, the WHO said.
"As poliovirus is found to remain in the environment, additional vaccination efforts are needed to reach every child and strengthen population immunity," the WHO said in a press release. "The presence of the virus still poses a risk to children with low or no immunity, in Gaza and throughout the region."
The WHO and its partners also plan to carry out another mass polio vaccination in April of this year, the agency said.
In mid-August 2024, the Palestinian Ministry of Health reported the first case of polio in 25 years in a 10-month-old child who had not been vaccinated and became paralyzed, according to the WHO. Doctors suspected polio after symptoms resembled the virus, which was confirmed in tests conducted in Amman, the capital of Jordan, the agency said.
Public health experts previously told ABC News they believe the true number of polio cases may have been higher, with many cases having gone undetected.
Although no additional cases have been reported, wastewater samples collected in Deir al Balah in central Gaza and Khan Younis in southern Gaza in December 2024 and January, respectively, confirm polio transmission, according to the WHO.
The polio strain detected in the recent wastewater samples is genetically linked to the sample first detected in Gaza in July 2024.
The WHO estimates that in 2022, polio vaccination coverage, conducted through routine immunization, was at 99%.
However, since the outbreak of the war following Hamas' terror attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, this percentage has fallen. According to the latest WHO-UNICEF routine immunization report, the number is estimated to be at 89% in 2023 due to the number of newborns not vaccinated.
Polio largely affects children under age 5 and can lead to paralysis or death. There are about 341,000 children under the age of five in Gaza, according to the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics.
