Pay attention. This disease could cripple much of Israel, Palestine and Egypt. Then the Middle East. Next the world in regions with infrastructure fails due to floods and societal breakdowns caused by war and catastrophic weather phenomena, maybe forest fires.
Be vaccinated. High risk persons like medical workers could get a lifetime booster.
There is no cure for poliomyelitis and mortality rates of polio are a little bit like Russian Roulette. You don’t know who will suffer not, suffer limb paralysis, total paralysis, or death.
Ironically in early March the attackers of Gaza bombed a small clinic on ‘vaccination day’ and killed 12 children having their inactivated polio vaccine (IPV) at 60-days of age. “We don’t use oral doses,” explained the Gaza regional director.
“Vaccination day was once a month on the first Thursday,” explains Behar Abbasi from Gaza. Her original report said she was contacted by nurse Ai’sha on the night of Thursday 7 March 2024 and learned Ai’sha had been contacted by an hysterical co-parent to say that a child and mother were missing and that others in his community were saying the same thing about their family members who had been expected back ‘home’ early afternoon.
“Shortly after that,” Behar said today, “we learned that Dr. Buni’s clinic had been bombed and the families of 12 infants attending for vaccinations had been killed. We polled the rescue people we knew then and found a civil rescue person in central Gaza who told us the small clinic was hit by a five-hundred-pound bomb and there were no survivors—the place was a blood bath of torn body parts intermingled through the rubble. I vomited wretchedly in the next few minutes, and then went into shock as I was already fatigued by overwork and intense bombings. I was better by nightfall, but I went out of service that day. Within half an hour of the news Ai’sha was on her way north with a team while I was falling apart. I have worked with Dr. B since 2012. This news broke me. We were very close, and this news was more than I could handle from these murdering evil men.”
A photomicrograph of the lumbar spinal cord depicting an infarct due to Polio Type III surrounding the anterior spinal artery. Photo credit: CDC Public Health Image Library
Photo is enlarged from original. Art, enlargement: Rosa Yamamoto / Feminine-Perspective-Magazine
“The significant issue is that IPV inoculations were stopped in the clinics’ comunities and the collected data were effectively erased by killing that clinic with an overkill five-hundred-pound bomb. Madness! There were no survivors—no records found. Nothing remained. It took over a month to identify most remains. Getting news to families around the world and trying to ship remains might be the worst experience any of us had lived through,” says nursing team leader Ai’sha.
What is significant about this event according to Dr. Nassima al Amouri, regional medical director for The RINJ Foundation, is that the north clinic established long ago by “Dr. Buni”—as her patients know her across the Middle East—were getting IPV doses from the supplies in Syria smuggled via Jordan and the team members were calling out to the local community to not delay the two month and subsequent inoculations.
Additionally, combination vaccines were on hand for the youngest, the doctor explained. Each dose resulted in the patient’s parent being given one of four colors of 4cm plastic squares which indicate which of the four dose levels the child had received: 2mos/4mos/6-18mos/4-6yrs.
Dr. Nassima explained that returning children were automatically given the correct dose and a replacement coloured square. This multilingual system was created in Syria during past wars and worked well, she said.
“For each little one the parent had to submit their recent level square which was filed to their name thus creating a simple currency record without computers and ledgers in a war zone,” explained the good doctor.
She adds that parents were being vaccinated as well, mostly with a ‘lifetime booster’ in accordance with the belief that every person in Gaza is at high risk. Medical workers were given ‘lifetime boosters’ late last year. Those parents who did not know or if they knew what level of inoculation, they had achieved were given the resumption of treatment.
According to USA provider of the vaccine with CDC concurrence:
Adults: first dose at any time / second dose 1 to 2 mos. later / third dose 6 to 12 mos. later. This schedule must be maintained. High risk persons should also be given a ‘lifetime booster’ following this treatment. (Check with your own healthcare provider.)
“Our fear was that the immunity level of so many malnourished children was so low, serious outcomes would be a higher percentile than normal if an outbreak occurred,” said Nassima as she hurried through the area to get to a known patient who had symptoms reportedly like early flaccid paralysis.
Dr. Nassima has been investigating the possibility of restarting the clinic against the advice of the security director who says a new clinic will also be bombed by the Americans and Israelis.
Hence, “volunteers to do this work were at zero for the past three months while remains were under study for identification and return to families where possible. So please see what can be done to fix this,..” urged Dr. al Amouri with a deep sigh.
By late in the day, four volunteers were confirmed from the Central Gaza team who had agreed to change their plans. A doctor was being sought to lead the team. Following dear Bonnie’s murder, remaining Medical Director, Nassima al Amouri has been ordered back to Syria as she is not even slightly authorized to any risk level besides home for the current time. She agrees.
“We had decided from considerable evidence that an abortive poliomyelitis was circulating with symptoms that theretofore were minor. No known spinal cases had emerged that Dr. B was aware of at the last time we spoke about this, but she said she was making inquiries of patients and other contacts in the community to learn if any children exhibited symptoms that might hint at an infection with a variant that had reached the central nervous system. That is hard to find in the first half year or so.
“This is why we bumped up the inoculation project for the infants our midwives helped deliver and for any child who could get to that clinic during the genocide. Until last October, children were well inoculated thanks to the World Health Organization but second, third or fourth doses have been missed for many children and newborns are at extreme risk. I cannot stress this enough. With all that is going on it was a difficult investigation. This information is exclusive to north Gaza which has been abandoned by most service providers, and for which no known child medical records exist, except what parents might have kept in their bombed-out homes. This is an unspeakable catastrophe the foul men in Washington and Tel Aviv have created,” exclaimed Dr. al Amouri. [We both almost silently sobbed.]
Dr. Harris and Dr. Poon both of the CSPAD.org subsidiary unit, support 100% Dr. al Amouri’s conclusions stressing the extreme urgency and saying in a memo, “the potential impact of the polio outbreak in Gaza is concerning, with the detection of the virus in sewage samples indicating a high risk of spread among the unvaccinated population. The situation is exacerbated by the ongoing conflict, which has severely damaged infrastructure and healthcare services, increasing the vulnerability of the population to such outbreaks. Our health experts are urgently calling for immediate action to prevent a catastrophic health crisis in Gaza and spreading. To the Israelis we say get the F out of Gaza and see your health care provider immediately.”
“Five children out of 1,000 infected kids become paralytic. Of these children, as many as 10% die early as the CNS fails their breathing processes, so Micheal, I need this warning put out there that the risk is widespread. The soldiers must get out of Gaza now and the dozen remaining hospitals with reasonable function must be given at least 1,500,000 doses including massive numbers of ‘lifetime boosters’ for adults, spread across the remaining months of this year. And if we must train 16-year-olds to inoculate then that’s what we must do. I am serious. This could impact the entire Middle East and then maybe the world. Cholera and Hepatitis vaccines are also needed.
“Please get this message out there. I heard the WHO is doing the same,” the RINJ Foundation medical director urged.
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