Washington Post A campaign is ongoing to vaccinate children in Gaza after its first polio case in 25 years. The threat to the United States is only in communities with low vaccination levels. The World Health Organization (WHO) has set about vaccinating hundreds of thousands of children in Gaza in response to the Palestinian enclave’s first polio case in 25 years.
The WHO last month reported one confirmed case, an almost 1-year-old boy whose limbs have been paralyzed by the illness. In addition, health officials found a variant of the virus in wastewater samples taken from central Gaza in June, indicating that the virus is circulating in the community.
“The principal cause is low vaccination rates among children,” said Bruce Gellin, adjunct professor of medicine at the Georgetown University School of Medicine and former president of global immunization at the Sabin Vaccine Institute in Washington. “Because this is a very infectious virus, when it comes to a community with many who have not been vaccinated and have no immunity, it can cause an outbreak, just as a spark can ignite a fire in a dry forest.”