A TOP World Health Organisation (WHO) official said on Tuesday that he’s ‘extremely worried’ about polio and other outbreaks of communicable diseases in Gaza after traces of the virus turned up in sewage samples in the territory.
Dr Ayadil Saparbekov, team lead for health emergencies at WHO in the Palestinian territories, said test results and a risk assessment were expected this week about how people and medical officials should respond to a possible outbreak.
There have been no confirmed human cases of polio in Gaza, but six of seven sewage samples tested positive for vaccine-derived poliovirus, he said. That means that one or more people who got a polio vaccine jab have shed the virus in the environment.
‘I am extremely worried about an outbreak happening in Gaza. And this is not only polio – the different outbreaks of the communicable diseases that may happen,’ he told a United Nations briefing in Geneva by video, alluding to a hepatitis outbreak there in 2023.
Saparbekov said lack of water, sanitation, and access to health care could lead to more people dying of communicable diseases than from injury-related conditions.
‘There is a high risk of spreading the circulating vaccine-derived poliovirus in Gaza, not only because of the detection but also because of the very dire situation with the water sanitation,’ he told reporters in Geneva via video link from occupied Jerusalem.
‘It may also spill over internationally, at a very high point.’
Meanwhile, over 20,000 children are still missing, with their fate unknown in Gaza. Another number close to that is of unaccompanied children, as the tragedy of families in Gaza continues with the ongoing aggression since October 7th.
Ahmad Hammad, who lost most of his family in a bombing on Deir al-Balah last January, says: ‘My grief for my martyred wife and children is one thing, but my grief for Hadi is on another level.
‘He’s the only one we couldn’t retrieve from under the rubble that night. I don’t know if there’s anything left of his small body to bury or if he was vaporised by the explosion and fire.’
In this painful story, Hadi was just 5 years old. He is one of the thousands of missing children, either buried under the rubble of their destroyed homes or detained by the occupation forces. Some were captured from different parts of the Gaza Strip during the ground invasion that began on October 7th, while others’ fates remain unknown, according to official and civilian sources.
The British organisation ‘Save the Children’ reported that approximately 21,000 children in Gaza have gone missing due to the Israeli war on the Strip, according to their latest estimates. Many of these children are either trapped under the rubble, detained, buried in unknown graves, or separated from their families.
The report also highlighted that recent displacement due to the Israeli attack on Rafah has led to more children being separated and increased pressure on families and communities caring for them.
UNICEF estimates that at least 17,000 children in Gaza are unaccompanied or separated from their families, each with a heartbreaking story of loss and grief.
In an unprecedented scene before the war, posters searching for missing children have become common among the tents of the displaced and in some populated areas of Gaza.
Abdullah Abu al-Qumsan, who lost his young son in the war, sets out every morning to post search notices for his son Fouad, who went missing after being injured in a bombing in the Jabalia refugee camp in October 2023, according to a UN report.
Abu al-Qumsan recounts that he was at his relatives’ home in the camp on October 31, 2023, when a 2.30pm airstrike hit, killing his parents. He and his son Fouad were trapped under the rubble for half an hour until they were rescued.
He adds that he was holding his conscious son, who was then taken for treatment, but he didn’t know which hospital he was taken to.
After searching through morgue refrigerators with no success, he found details in the archives of Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City matching his son’s description: ‘An unidentified child with minor injuries was brought to the hospital.’
Abu al-Qumsan says he still doesn’t know who took his child or who has cared for him since then. He has tried every possible means to find his son Fouad, using media and social media, and recently resorting to paper posters with Fouad’s picture, spreading them among the tents and streets, hoping for any clue about his son’s fate.
During his nine-month search for his son, Abdullah has encountered similar and even more challenging cases of families looking for their children.
Fouad’s picture isn’t the only one spread among the tents. The UN news camera has spotted many other posters searching for children missing during the war and the displacement crisis in Gaza.
Every now and then, posts appear on social media searching for missing people, some of whom are children who lost their way back to their displacement tents.
UNICEF estimates that at least 17,000 children in Gaza are unaccompanied or separated from their families, making up 1% of the total displaced population of 1.7 million. This estimate is likely low due to the difficulty in collecting and verifying information under the current security and humanitarian conditions.
A child protection specialist from ‘Save the Children’ mentioned that the situation in Gaza worsens daily for children who have lost their families or are left without care in the current conditions. ‘We are working with local partners to identify and assist unaccompanied children, but there is no safe place for these children in Gaza,’ he said.
He explained that families hosting these lone children face significant challenges in meeting their basic needs such as shelter, food, and water.
Some orphans in Gaza face the possibility of becoming unknown identities. Many were found at such a young age that they couldn’t speak or identify their parents and families, or the psychological trauma or injuries they suffered made it impossible for them to do so.
These children are referred to as ‘WCNSF’ (Wounded Child with No Surviving Family). The number of these children is unknown, and they face an uncertain future if their families cannot be identified.
James Elder, UNICEF spokesperson, told The Guardian: ‘Hospital wings are full of wounded children with no surviving family. We had a 14-year-old girl who had just come out of a war zone in Gaza City, shocked, silent, and covered in blood, with no one left (of her relatives).’
Elder emphasised that the frequent occurrence of such cases underscores the random and brutal nature of the Israeli aggression on Gaza, wiping out entire families.
- Three Palestinian young men were killed and others were injured by Israeli gunfire in different areas of the occupied West Bank on Wednesday morning.
A young man called Ahmed Aslan died of critical bullet injuries he sustained when the Israeli occupation forces (IOF) opened fire at him in Qalandia refugee camp, northeast of Jerusalem.
The Red Crescent, for its part, said that six young citizens suffered bullet injuries and two others were severely beaten during the IOF raid in Qalandia camp.
The IOF also detonated a house belonging to the family of Mohamed Manasra and ransacked several homes in the camp. Manasra was killed by IOF gunfire last February near al-Lubban ash-Sharqiya town in southern Nablus.
In Tubas, the IOF shot dead a customs police officer called Abd Sarhan, a resident of Balata refugee camp.
The Red Crescent said that its ambulance crews evacuated martyr Sarhan and another wounded citizen, who suffered a bullet injury in his chest, to a local hospital.
Local sources said that Israeli special forces stormed Tubas City at first, encircled a house and clashed with resistance fighters, before military reinforcements were rushed to the area.
They added that Israeli forces raided homes and kidnapped two ex-detainees from Tubas.
In Tulkarem, a young man identified as Yazan Abdo was pronounced dead on Wednesday after he succumbed to a serious bullet injury he sustained during the IOF raid in Tulkarem refugee camp on Tuesday.
The IOF killed three resistance commanders as well as a mother and her daughter in Tulkarem camp when they bombed a house using a drone during a raid that continued for 17 hours.
A 13-year-old child from Bal’ah town in Tulkarem called Saif Omair died on Tuesday evening of a critical bullet injury he had sustained about two weeks ago when an Israeli soldier opened fire at him in Meithalun town in Jenin.
