Polio vaccinations arrive in Gaza, but the sanitation crisis remains

After a rare and relatively swift six weeks of talks, Israel and Hamas have agreed to three separate three-day pauses in fighting, starting Sunday in central Gaza, to allow for the vaccination of some 640,000 children against polio amid fears that the outbreak of the potentially fatal virus could spread beyond the territory.

After a rare and relatively swift six weeks of talks, Israel and Hamas have agreed to three separate three-day pauses in fighting, starting Sunday in central Gaza, to allow for the vaccination of some 640,000 children against polio amid fears that the outbreak of the potentially fatal virus could spread beyond the territory.

Eleven months of Israeli bombardment have created the ideal conditions to bring polio — which is spread mainly when contaminated stool from an infected person is orally ingested — back from near-eradication: destroyed water and sewage lines; hundreds of thousands crowded into patches of land lacking toilets and sewage systems; and a health care system that has collapsed under the weight of hostilities and war injuries, leading to a dramatic drop in routine vaccinations.

It's a sanitation crisis so dire that it has put people at risk of ingesting traces of infected human waste. Georgios Petropoulos, head of the U.N.’s humanitarian agency in Gaza, told NBC News from Rafah that it was “almost impossible” to steer clear of disease.

“I haven’t seen anything like it,” he said. “There’s rivers of human feces.”

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/polio-vaccinations-gaza-sanitation-crisis-rcna169085

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