Children in Gaza will be protected from polio but not Israel’s airstrikes
By Yara M. Asi
September 6, 2024
At the beginning of the month, a joint effort bringing together the Palestinian Ministry of Health, the World Health Organization (WHO), UNICEF, UNRWA, and other partners, started in an effort to vaccinate 640,000 children in Gaza for polio, a highly contagious virus that can cause lifelong paralysis. The vaccination campaign would be “one of the most complex in the world,” according to an UNRWA spokesperson, and is being conducted under a series of time-limited “humanitarian pauses” around vaccination sites, but not a full ceasefire.
The campaign was deemed necessary mere weeks after polio was detected in Gaza’s wastewater in late July, and after the first case was discovered in a 10-month old boy, Abdul Rahman Abu Al-Jidyan, whose leg is now paralyzed. His parents had not been able to get him his routine vaccinations during the war due to being displaced multiple times. If he survives at all, his future will certainly be unclear, a reality not lost on his mother: “It’s his right to walk, run, and move like before. It’s his right to get the proper treatment, travel, get out, and get his chance in life.”
Every child does deserve a chance to live, including Palestinian children in the Gaza Strip, who should not be at risk of polio in this day and age. Because despite the virus being potentially deadly if left to proliferate, it is so easily preventable.
Whilst there is no arguing against the value of the polio vaccination campaign, we must remember that the suffering caused by the virus is in addition to the tens of thousands of children in Gaza who have been killed and tens of thousands more injured, including thousands of children with amputations and other life-altering injuries. Some untold number remain trapped under the rubble of their homes; many children who survive may be the last person left in their family, leading to an entirely new acronym used by medical workers: WCNSF (Wounded Child, No Surviving Family). At least 19,000 children have been orphaned, and aside from polio, children in Gaza are suffering from multiple other infectious diseases due to living in crowded and poorly served shelters.
Furthermore, Children who have survived months of bombing are increasingly starving to death.
Aside from the physical toll, every child has been out of school for at least one school year, with no prospect of return—especially as most schools are destroyed. Parents and humanitarian workers in the territory report significant mental trauma in children, many of whom may never feel safe again.
While political actors and the humanitarian sector were able to come together for a complex vaccination campaign, it is telling that they have been unable to make any progress on the endless other ways Palestinian children in Gaza are being harmed.
Unlike orphanhood, or lack of schooling, polio is contagious. Viruses are not contained by borders, a lesson made clear by the quick spread of Covid-19 just a few years ago. A polio outbreak anywhere in the world is a risk to everyone, especially with international workers and Israeli soldiers going in and out of Gaza. It is not difficult to argue that the impetus behind the vaccination campaign was not, then, solely with the children of Gaza in mind, but with the fear that polio may spread beyond them.
A policy centering the real needs of the children of Gaza would look much different than a …
[READ THE COMPLETE ARTICLE HERE]