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This past week, poliovirus was detected in sewage samples in the Gaza Strip. According to the World Health Organization (WHO) polio (poliomyelitis) is a "highly infectious disease" that "invades the nervous system and can cause total paralysis in a matter of hours".

Like so much else in the Gaza Strip these days, polio according to the WHO "mainly affects children under 5 years of age" but can infect "anyone of any age who is unvaccinated". Furthermore, "One in 200 infections leads to irreversible paralysis (usually in the legs). Among those paralyzed, 5-10% die when their breathing muscles become immobilized".

Israel and its apologists can be expected to blame Hamas for this state of affairs, with canards about the Gaza health authorities prioritizing the construction of tunnels over inoculating those under their rule, dirty Arabs, and the like. The fact of the matter is that not only is polio not endemic in the Gaza Strip, it was eradicated from the territory several decades ago. The achievement was publicly touted by none other than Ted Tulchinksy, who from 1978-1994 served as the Coordinator for Health in the West Bank and Gaza Strip within Israel's Ministry of Health. His testimony is significant because during his tenure Tulchinsky supervised the health departments of the military governments Israel established in each of the West Bank and Gaza Strip in 1967.

Writing on the website of the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) in 2011, Tulchinsky writes that during the 1970s polio epidemics periodically erupted in Israel and the Palestinian territories it was in the process of annexing, and "despite high levels of [vaccination] coverage" in the Gaza Strip in particular, on account of its degraded sanitary infrastructure.

Tulchinsky recounts that in 1978 Israel consulted with Natan Goldblum and Joseph Melnick, two noted epidemiologists from Baylor University, to develop more effective anti-polio strategies. Their recommendation, to increase the four doses traditionally given to infants during their first year with an additional three of a different variety, was pioneered in the Gaza Strip. It proved so effective that the disease was eradicated from the territory within a few short years. Tulchinsky does not say so, but it seems likely that as with so much else the Gaza Strip here too functioned as a human laboratory for new Israeli methods. Indeed, the Goldblum-Melnick vaccination sequence was according to Tulchinsky "dubbed the Gaza system" and subsequently applied within Israel to quell a polio outbreak of its own in 1988. "As a result of this episode", Tulchinsky wrote, "Israel adopted the Gaza system, and total eradication of polio was rapidly achieved"....


Read the full opinion at mondoweiss