The territory hasn’t had any polio cases for 25 years but this suggests the virus is spreading. Polio experts are scrambling to figure out the origins and whether or not there are active cases.
ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:
Experts from the World Health Organization are in Gaza today, collecting stool samples and interviewing parents. They’re looking for any active cases of polio. Gaza has been polio-free for 25 years, but now the virus has shown up in wastewater samples. NPR’s Gabrielle Emanuel has more.
GABRIELLE EMANUEL, BYLINE: When Ayadil Saparbekov was in Gaza last week, he saw a familiar scene.
AYADIL SAPARBEKOV: The sewage overflows on the street. I personally saw children actually playing there, you know, trying to jump up and down.
EMANUEL: Saparbekov oversees health emergencies for the World Health Organization in Gaza and the West Bank. He cringed watching the kids splash one another with sewage, knowing it could make them sick. Then he got a call adding yet another concern to his list, polio. It had just been found in 6 out of 7 routine sewage samples from Gaza.
SAPARBEKOV: It’s very dangerous disease. And in the situation of Gaza, it’s beyond dangerous.
EMANUEL: Dangerous because it can cause lifelong paralysis in kids and even death – and especially bad in Gaza since there’s been severe damage to water infrastructure since the war started. Polio can be transmitted through contaminated water. So far, there aren’t any identified polio cases in Gaza. But experts worry it could be spreading silently with asymptomatic and very mild cases. This discovery in the sewage samples has set off an international investigation.
SAPARBEKOV: How does this happen? When did it happen? And where did it happen?
EMANUEL: And hints are beginning to come in. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has done genomic sequencing.
SAPARBEKOV: And they have linked this virus to the one that was circulating in Egypt. It could have been brought by anyone, by anyone, including the smugglers, the truck drivers.
EMANUEL: They also found that it could have been circulating since last September – before the conflict started. This matters because the longer it’s been around, the more people could have been exposed to it. Plus, there’s something else experts have discovered. This isn’t wild polio. It’s another type of polio that can emerge when a certain vaccine is used, the Sabin oral poliovirus vaccine. Raul Andino is a microbiologist at the University of California, San Francisco.
RAUL ANDINO: It’s an incredibly successful vaccine, but it has this problem.
EMANUEL: Which is that it contains a live poliovirus that’s been weakened. This vaccine is not used in the U.S., but it is common in many lower-income countries. It’s usually given as a couple drops on a sugar cube. And for a few weeks after, the weakened virus comes out in a person’s feces and into the sewage. From there, it can mutate, regain strength and infect someone who is still unvaccinated.
ANDINO: And this is where we came in, and we prevent those mutations.
EMANUEL: Andino helped create a new polio vaccine that’s far less likely to mutate and cause what’s called vaccine-derived polio. That’s what they found in Gaza. He says this new vaccine is 100 times safer.
ANDINO: It’s like a – you were driving a 1950 car, and now you’re driving a, you know, 2020 car. It’s better.
EMANUEL: This vaccine has been deployed in dozens of countries, but there’s not enough of it. That means the old one is still being used.
ANDINO: So that’s why the stress right now is trying to produce enough doses for everybody.
EMANUEL: In Gaza, the WHO’s Saparbekov says he’s alerted top officials at headquarters that they may need to get their hands on this new vaccine. Since so many kids missed their doses during the war, health workers will likely need to do a mass polio vaccination campaign, quick.
Gabrielle Emanuel, NPR News.
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