Gaza’s lack of clean water and crippled health system are fertile ground for the spread of infections that could become regional or even global threats, health experts said.
ADVERTISEMENTThe World Health Organization (WHO) is preparing a mass polio immunisation campaign for 500,000 children in Gaza, after the virus that causes the highly contagious disease was detected in wastewater samples around displacement camps last month.
The shots come from global stockpiles, and while WHO Director-General Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus has already signed off on their use, they’re sitting in storage in Indonesia because the WHO is facing major barriers to launch the effort, officials said during a press briefing on Wednesday.
That includes transportation issues, uncertainty around cold-chain storage for the vaccines once they make it to Gaza and limited movement for health workers in the area.
“With all the tension in the region (…) we want to make sure that we plan as carefully as possible,” Dr Richard Peeperkorn, the WHO’s representative in the Palestinian territories, told reporters.
WHO officials called for a ceasefire, or at least “days of tranquillity,” to allow health workers to carry out the immunisation effort, in which health workers and volunteers will go tent to tent to vaccinate kids in the coming weeks.
Without a military pause for the vaccination campaign, “we risk the virus spreading further, including across borders to other countries and other regions,” said Dr Hanan Balkhy, WHO’s regional director for the Eastern Mediterranean.
The agency is also working on public health messaging about polio, which mainly affects children under 5 and can lead to irreversible paralysis and death in rare cases.
“The risk to children is high, and we must move rapidly to prevent and contain the virus’ spread,” Balkhy said.
Public health threats in Gaza
Polio isn’t the only health challenge facing Gaza, where Palestinian health authorities say more than 39,000 people have been killed by Israeli airstrikes and other attacks since the conflict escalated in October 2023. Another 2.3 million people have been displaced.
Just 16 of Gaza’s 36 hospitals are now partially functional, and other medical services have been depleted. Israeli forces have destroyed all of Gaza’s wastewater treatment plants and 70 per cent of its sewage pumps, according to Oxfam – making it a prime environment for diseases to spread.
That’s particularly true during the warmer summer months when mosquitoes and other bugs proliferate and food spoils faster.
As a result of the conflict, people in Gaza are grappling with respiratory infections, diarrhoea, scabies and lice, skin rashes, chickenpox, jaundice, and hepatitis A, among other health issues that are unlikely to spread beyond Gaza because it is effectively “blocked off” from the rest of the region, Peeperkorn said.
Even so, other global health concerns could erupt from the conflict, such as growing antimicrobial resistance, which is a longer-term threat that WHO experts are already raising the alarm about.
War zones are fertile ground for antibiotic-resistant superbugs that emerge due to poor sanitary conditions and hospitals’ limited ability to treat wounds and infections in areas that have been ravaged by conflict, officials said.
Balkhy warned that antibiotic-resistant bacteria could move from Gaza to the broader region, and from there become globally endemic, making these bacteria difficult, if not impossible, to control.
ADVERTISEMENTSuperbugs can be bacteria, viruses, parasites, or fungi that have mutated to resist antibiotics, meaning they are more likely to cause deadly infections that would otherwise be treatable. Antimicrobial resistance was responsible for nearly 5 million deaths globally in 2019, according to the US-based Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation.
“This is going to be one of the most devastating outcomes of this current war in Gaza,” Balkhy said. When drug-resistant bacteria spread, “we face more and more challenges in treating patients in the highest, most sophisticated hospitals around the world”.
