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Polio Returns to Gaza After 25 Years
“How bad is polio?” in 4 minutes.
Gaza reported its first case of poliomyelitis in twenty-five years on August 16th. A dire consequence of an eleven-month war that has left hospitals in ruins as millions upon millions of people are displaced from their homes.
According to the Palestinian health ministry, the case was confirmed in a ten-month-old baby in the city of Deir al-Balah in the Gaza Strip. The child has become paralyzed in its left leg, but its condition is now stable.
Poliomyelitis, also known as polio, is a neurological disorder caused by the poliovirus, which leads to flaccid muscle paralysis. The disease disproportionately affects children under the age of five and may cause paralysis of the limbs, when the virus targets the patient’s motor neurons in the spinal cord, or it may affect breathing muscles and the heart, if the virus targets the brain.
Among those paralyzed, 5 to 10% ultimately die due to respiratory and cardiac failure.
Such neurological complications emerge in less than one percent of all poliovirus infections, which makes it particularly dangerous, since the vast majority of infected individuals are asymptomatic or have non-specific symptoms (such as fever, sore throat and vomiting, headaches and limb pain). This means that for…