Gaza’s first polio case in 25 years highlights total collapse of its health infrastructure

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• Geoff Bennett:

  The World Health Organization is leading an effort to start vaccinating children in Gaza this Sunday against polio. Israel and Hamas have agreed to have three-day pauses in the fighting in different zones so health workers can distribute the vaccine.

  It comes amid the massive destruction of Gaza's health care infrastructure and after health officials detected the first polio case there in 25 years.

  In a refugee camp in the Central Gaza Strip, a once vibrant baby boy now sits paralyzed in his car seat; 10-month-old Abdul Rahman is Gaza's first confirmed case of polio in a quarter-century. The anguish clear in his mother's voice.

• Nivine Abu Al-Jidyan, Mother (through interpreter):

  He's my only baby boy. It's his right to walk, run, and move like before. It's his right to get the proper treatment, travel, get out, and get his chance in life.

• Geoff Bennett:

  Nearly a year of displacement and destruction prevented her child from receiving a polio vaccine.

• Nivine Abu Al-Jidyan (through interpreter):

  We were displaced from the north to the south from one place to another. Abdul Rahman did not get his vaccinations.

• Geoff Bennett:

  Now, as fighting drags on in the death toll in Gaza, it clips his 40,000, authorities are scrambling to prevent the full-blown outbreak that the United Nations and health officials have been warning about for months.

  Sam Rose, United Nations Relief and Works Agency: We're calling for calm. We're calling for humanitarian pauses that will allow the vaccination programs to pass and be implemented successfully.

• Geoff Bennett:

  Israel and Hamas have agreed to a series of humanitarian pauses in the fighting, as the U.N. attempts to vaccinate more than 600,000 Palestinian children under the age of 10. Over one million doses of the polio vaccine have now been shipped into Gaza, and more than 2,000 health workers will conduct the operation.

  The WHO says at least 95 percent coverage during each of the two vaccination rounds, conducted four weeks apart, is necessary to prevent the spread of the disease.

• Rik Peeperkorn, World Health Organization:

  This is a massive operation. The security, of course, is paramount. And we urge all parties to ensure that protection, as well as — of them and of course, of the families, as well as of the health facilities and children.

• Geoff Bennett:

  But for Palestinian families, after nearly a year of sustained bombardment, the vaccine, while welcomed, offers little comfort.

• Taghreed Bakr, Grandmother (through interpreter):

  We're asking for a humanitarian truce. Just have mercy on us, on the children, so that we can give them the polio vaccine. The schools have been bombed. The camps have been bombed. The streets are bombed. There is bombing everywhere. There is bombing everywhere in Gaza.

• Geoff Bennett:

  For perspective now on the total collapse of health infrastructure in Gaza and the growing polio crisis, we turn to Dr. Tammy Abughnaim, who recently returned from South Gaza's Nasser Hospital, where she volunteered with the International Rescue Committee as an E.R. physician.

  Thank you for being with us.

• Dr. Tammy Abughnaim, Volunteer, International Rescue Committee:

  Thank you for having me.

• Geoff Bennett:

  So, as we just heard, Gaza is seeing its first confirmed case of polio in 25 years. How big a threat does this pose?

• Dr. Tammy Abughnaim:

  I think it poses a tremendous threat to the population of Gaza, but also a threat to public health in general in the region.

  As you have mentioned, the health care system has been under direct Israeli targeting and bombardment for the last 11 months, and the destruction of infrastructure means that epidemics will become a common thing. This will become one of many epidemics that we anticipate over the course of the next few months and years for Gaza.

  The decimation of the health care system by Israeli forces means that it will be difficult to tackle. And, as your report mentioned earlier, humanitarian pauses and truces and the gymnastics of coordinating a vaccination program are made extremely difficult by the fact that there is still ongoing bombardment of civilian areas.

• Geoff Bennett:

  Well, a question about that, because this WHO plan to inoculate more than 600,000 children against polio, based on what you know of the region and its disintegrated health care system, is this even feasible?

• Dr. Tammy Abughnaim:

  It's the best that the World Health Organization is going to be able to do under the circumstances. In the absence of a cease-fire, this vaccination program is really kind of the only patched-up solution that we have at this point.

  In an ideal world, we would be able to get a cease-fire and get all of these children vaccinated. It's important to remember too that just because Israel has outlined certain areas and certain times that it is not going to be bombarding these vaccination centers does not mean that it's going to make the task of actual vaccine administration easier.

  There are lots of logistics that go into vaccination programs, transportation to these centers. The roads in Gaza have been destroyed by Israeli forces. You can't easily get a taxi or a bus and go to a vaccination center.

  And then the areas around the vaccination center will still be subject to aerial bombardment by Israeli forces. So all of the logistics of a humanitarian pause and an operation like this are extremely complicated, made more difficult by the fact that it's hard to plan around what Israel will actually do during these times.

• Geoff Bennett:

  You have been to Gaza twice in the last few months. You have served at both Al-Aqsa Hospital in Central Gaza and the Nasser Hospital in the south.

  How would you describe the health and humanitarian conditions?

• Dr. Tammy Abughnaim:

  I mean, I would describe it in the way that every humanitarian aid worker who has returned describes it. It's catastrophic and it's unacceptably catastrophic.

  There seems to be this floating idea that, oh, goodness, the health care system is decimated, it's incapacitated, it's crippled. But it's still somewhat functional. But it is not nearly at the capacity that it should be. And it is not the spontaneous natural disaster that's happened in Gaza. It's the result of deliberate targeting and strikes.

  And so the things that we're seeing at Al-Aqsa Hospital and Nasser Hospital are shortages of supplies because Israel restricts the amount of entry, both of supplies and personnel, that can come in. So on any given day, when I was in the emergency department, we didn't have a sufficient number of tourniquets. We were reusing supplies that technically should not be reused, like ventilator supplies, intubation stylets.

  We were using giant rubber bands as tourniquets. Specialized surgical equipment not being available is also a problem because a lot of these patients require surgical intervention, and they're simply not able to get it. And these are all the direct result of Israeli-imposed restrictions.

• Geoff Bennett:

  What do you carry as a health professional having worked in Gaza?

• Dr. Tammy Abughnaim:

  I mean, having worked in Gaza and come back from my second mission, the things that stay with you are really the stories of the people.

  Besides the horrific trauma that you witness every single day to innocent civilians, you also see the stories of those civilians, the stories of the mothers, the stories of the health care workers. Any time I sit down in the emergency department on a shift, I make it a point to speak to my Palestinian colleagues about what their experiences have been.

  Many of my Palestinian colleagues have been kidnapped by Israeli forces during the siege of Nasser Hospital, during the siege of Shifa Hospital. And they tell me horrifying accounts of torture that they suffered because they were health care workers.

  Human Rights Watch recently released a report on this, the targeting and the torture of health care workers throughout the Gaza Strip. And their stories are in line with everything that's described in that report. So, really, the scars that you carry coming out of Gaza doing humanitarian aid work is the scars of the stories that people will tell you of the suffering that Israel has inflicted on them.

• Geoff Bennett:

  Dr. Tammy Abughnaim, thank you for making time for us in between your shifts there back home in Illinois. Thanks for being with us.

• Dr. Tammy Abughnaim:

  Appreciate it. Thank you.