Wars a setback to polio eradication programme: WHO
Margaret Harris, a spokeswoman for the World Health Organization (WHO), says wars have eliminated past efforts made to eradicate polio.
“We were on the point of eliminating it,” Harris told Al Jazeera. “But with conflicts breaking out around the world, all that work, all those millions of dollars … have been wasted because we have just gone backwards,” Harris said.
Cases of polio have declined by 99 percent worldwide since 1988, thanks to mass vaccination campaigns, and efforts continue to eradicate it everywhere.
“Most of polio, 75 percent, may well be asymptomatic – it’s like many viruses. The problem is that if you are one of those getting a severe form you could be paralysed for life or you can die,” she said.
Her comments came as a polio outbreak has been declared inside the Gaza Strip where more than nine months of war have destroyed sewage and water systems. On Friday, the WHO said it was sending about a million vaccines to the Strip.
However, Harris said “we need a ceasefire” to get children vaccinated.
Solid waste management system in Gaza has collapsed: UN
The United Nations Development Programme has concluded the waste management system in Gaza is no longer functioning.
In its latest report, it said there is no access to major landfills and waste is accumulating “at more than 140 temporary dumping sites which causes serious health and environmental risks, including a spike in diarrheal illness and in acute respiratory infections”.
Since October 7, it noted there have been the following recorded cases, noting the statistics are “likely far higher”:
- Nearly 1 million cases of acute respiratory infections
- 575,000 cases of acute watery diarrhoea
- More than 100,000 cases of jaundice
The agency called for an urgent response because of increasing public health risks.
Lice, scabies, rashes plague Palestinian children in Gaza
Skin diseases are running rampant in Gaza, health officials say, from appalling conditions in overcrowded tent camps housing hundreds of thousands of Palestinians driven from their homes by Israel’s war now entering its 10th month.
Palestinians have no soap to wash themselves, their children or their clothes during the summer heat, a report by the AP said. According to the UN, the sanitation system has collapsed amid Israel’s bombardment and offensives.
The World Health Organization has reported more than 160,00 cases of lice, scabies and skin rashes. At one hospital, doctors report hundreds of skin disease cases a day, including a steady stream of children, covered in spots, scabs, rashes and lesions that turn into worse infections.
Cleanliness is impossible in the ramshackle tents, basically wood frames hung with blankets or plastic sheets, crammed side by side over wide stretches.
People have to wear the same clothes day after day until they’re able to wash them, then they wear them again immediately. Flies are everywhere. Children play in garbage-strewn sand.
Sham al-Hessi, center, who suffers from skin disease, is covered with skin cream at a makeshift tent camp in Deir el-Balah, central Gaza Strip, Monday, July 29
