The Palestinian Health Ministry said the first case of infection was reported in a 10-month-old child. Polio in the Gaza city of Deir al-Balah. The child has not received any dose of polio vaccine. Tests carried out in the Jordanian capital Amman confirmed the infection in the child. Last month, the polio virus was detected in wastewater samples in Gaza. In a statement, the Palestinian ministry said it would implement a vaccination campaign targeting children under the age of 10 in the coming days.

The World Health Organization and UNICEF called for a seven-day pause in the war in Gaza starting in late August to vaccinate 640,000 Palestinian children against polio after the polio virus was found in wastewater in two major cities last month. The WHO said on Friday that the vaccination campaign will have two phases, the second of which will take place in September. In each phase, children under the age of 10 will be given two drops of an oral vaccine against poliovirus type 2, the WHO said in a statement.

Polio is a disease caused by a virus that primarily affects nerves in the spinal cord or brain stem. In its most severe form, polio can cause a person to be unable to move certain limbs, also known as paralysis. It can also lead to breathing problems and sometimes death. This disease is also known as poliomyelitis.

It is a condition that usually affects children under the age of 5. It is a highly contagious disease caused by a virus. The virus attacks the nervous system causing paralysis within a few hours. The virus can spread from person to person mainly by the faecal-oral route or, less frequently, through a common medium (for example, contaminated water or food) and multiplies in the intestine.

Symptoms of Polio

There are different types of polio and the symptoms vary depending on the type of disease.

Sterilized polio

• Fever
• Headache
• Muscle pain
• sore throat
• stomach pain
• loss of appetite
• nausea
• vomit

Nonparalytic Polio

• Neck pain or stiffness
• Pain or stiffness in an arm or leg
• severe headache
• Stiffness in the spine and neck
• decreased alertness
• muscle weakness

paralytic polio

• severe pain
• Extreme sensitivity to touch
• tingling or prickling sensation
• muscle cramps or twitching
• Progression from muscle weakness to paralysis

Depending on the severity of the disease, other signs or symptoms may include:

• Paralysis of the muscles involved in breathing
• difficulty swallowing.

Complications of polio

Let’s look at some of the complications of polio.

• permanent paralysis
• shortening of the muscles that causes deformity of the bones or joints
• chronic pain
• Post-polio syndrome.

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