The Israeli army announced Sunday that it had begun a campaign to vaccinate its soldiers against polio, the virus of which was found in wastewater in the Gaza Strip, where Israel and Hamas have been locked in a nine-month war.
A strain of the disease, currently endemic only in Pakistan and Afghanistan, has been found in several samples of wastewater from the Gaza Strip, the Israeli government and Hamas, which governs the Palestinian territory, said on Thursday.
Polio is a highly contagious disease caused by a virus that attacks the spinal cord and can cause permanent paralysis.
“The Israeli military, in coordination with the Health Ministry, has decided that troops operating in the area should be vaccinated against the virus,” the Israeli military said in a statement.
According to the army, the campaign has already begun and also concerns reservists, but they clarified that vaccination will not be mandatory.
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The campaign could involve hundreds of thousands of people. The Israeli army has declined to say how many soldiers it has deployed in Gaza, citing security concerns.
He also said he was “working” to deliver polio vaccine to the Strip, intended for the Palestinian territory’s “population” of about 2.4 million residents.
So far, no cases of polio have been found in humans, but “this discovery is extremely worrying,” World Health Organization spokesman Christian Lindmeier said on Friday.
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The war in Gaza erupted on October 7, when Islamist Hamas commandos killed 1,195 people, mostly civilians, and kidnapped 251 in southern Israel, according to a tally based on official Israeli data.
In response, Israel launched an offensive that has already killed 38,983 people in the Gaza Strip, mostly civilians, according to the territory’s Health Ministry.
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