This past week, poliovirus was detected in sewage samples in the Gaza Strip. According to the World Health Organization (WHO) polio (poliomyelitis) is a “highly infectious disease” that “invades the nervous system and can cause total paralysis in a matter of hours”.
Like so much else in the Gaza Strip these days, polio according to the WHO “mainly affects children under 5 years of age” but can infect “anyone of any age who is unvaccinated”. Furthermore, “One in 200 infections leads to irreversible paralysis (usually in the legs). Among those paralyzed, 5-10% die when their breathing muscles become immobilized”.
Israel and its apologists can be expected to blame Hamas for this state of affairs, with canards about the Gaza health authorities prioritizing the construction of tunnels over inoculating those under their rule, dirty Arabs, and the like. The fact of the matter is that not only is polio not endemic in the Gaza Strip, it was eradicated from the territory several decades ago. The achievement was publicly touted by none other than Ted Tulchinksy, who from 1978-1994 served as the Coordinator for Health in the West Bank and Gaza Strip within Israel’s Ministry of Health. His testimony is significant because during his tenure Tulchinsky supervised the health departments of the military governments Israel established in each of the West Bank and Gaza Strip in 1967.
Writing on the website of the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) in 2011, Tulchinsky writes that during the 1970s polio epidemics periodically erupted in Israel and the Palestinian territories it was in the process of annexing, and “despite high levels of [vaccination] coverage” in the Gaza Strip in particular, on account of its degraded sanitary infrastructure.
Tulchinsky recounts that in 1978 Israel consulted with Natan Goldblum and Joseph Melnick, two noted epidemiologists from Baylor University, to develop more effective anti-polio strategies. Their recommendation, to increase the four doses traditionally given to infants during their first year with an additional three of a different variety, was pioneered in the Gaza Strip. It proved so effective that the disease was eradicated from the territory within a few short years. Tulchinsky does not say so, but it seems likely that as with so much else the Gaza Strip here too functioned as a human laboratory for new Israeli methods. Indeed, the Goldblum-Melnick vaccination sequence was according to Tulchinsky “dubbed the Gaza system” and subsequently applied within Israel to quell a polio outbreak of its own in 1988. “As a result of this episode”, Tulchinsky wrote, “Israel adopted the Gaza system, and total eradication of polio was rapidly achieved”.
It is unclear how polio has suddenly re-appeared in the Gaza Strip. What is beyond doubt is how it’s spreading. Israel has systematically destroyed the Gaza Strip’s health, sanitary, water treatment, and power infrastructure, particularly since October 2023, leading to the collapse of systems that were already precarious. Contaminated water, untreated sewage, and uncollected garbage, particularly when paired with the severe overcrowding resulting from Israel’s genocidal campaign and repeated forced displacement of the civilian population, represent ideal conditions for its spread.
In the words of United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, speaking last December:
The people of Gaza are being told to move like human pinballs – ricocheting between ever-smaller slivers of the south, without any of the basics of survival … Conditions in shelters are overcrowded and unsanitary. People nurse open wounds. Hundreds of people stand in line for hours to use one shower or toilet … wearing clothes they have not changed for two months.
Such conditions have also created a breeding ground for other infectious diseases. As of June 30, the WHO reported nearly a million cases of acute respiratory infection (affecting almost half the population), over half a million cases of diarrhea (including nearly 200,000 cases of “acute watery diarrhea”), and over 100,000 cases of acute jaundice (suggesting hepatitis is widespread), and so on. The WHO notes these figures “should be interpreted with caution, due to delayed and incomplete data reporting”. As the summer intensifies, there have also been multiple warnings of a cholera outbreak.
With few and limited exceptions, Israel is preventing the entry of fuel, vaccines, medical supplies, and potable water into the Gaza Strip. As Israel’s Minister of Defense, Yoav Gallant, publicly announced on October 8, “We are imposing a complete siege on Gaza. There will be no electricity, no food, no water, no fuel. Everything will be closed”.