GAZA, (PIC)
A top World Health Organization (WHO) official said Tuesday that he’s “extremely worried” about polio and other outbreaks of communicable diseases in Gaza after traces of the virus turned up in sewage samples in the territory.
Dr. Ayadil Saparbekov, team lead for health emergencies at WHO in the Palestinian territories, said test results and a risk assessment were expected this week about how people and medical officials should respond to a possible outbreak.
There have been no confirmed human cases of polio in Gaza, but six of seven sewage samples tested positive for vaccine-derived poliovirus, he said. That means that one or more people who got a polio vaccine jab have shed the virus in the environment.
“I am extremely worried about an outbreak happening in Gaza. And this is not only polio — the different outbreaks of the communicable diseases that may happen,” he told a United Nations briefing in Geneva by video, alluding to a hepatitis outbreak there in 2023.
Saparbekov said lack of water, sanitation, and access to health care could lead to more people dying of communicable diseases than from injury-related conditions.
“There is a high risk of spreading the circulating vaccine-derived poliovirus in Gaza, not only because of the detection but also because of the very dire situation with the water sanitation,” he told reporters in Geneva via video link from Occupied Jerusalem.
“It may also spill over internationally, at a very high point.”
