Polio has broken out among young children in northeast Syria, the World Health Organisation (WHO) confirmed on Tuesday, and could spread inside and outside the country, where civil war has led to falling vaccination rates. Polio, a crippling disease caused by a virus transmitted via contaminated food and water, can spread rapidly among children under five, especially in the kind of unsanitary conditions endured by the displaced in Syria or crowded refugee camps in neighbouring countries.
Twenty-two children in Deir al-Zor province bordering Iraq became paralysed on October 17 and WHO's regional laboratory in Tunis has isolated the wild polio virus in samples taken from 10 victims. Results on the other 12 are expected within days. "Out of those 22 being investigated, 10 are now confirmed to be due to polio virus," Oliver Rosenbauer, spokesman of the WHO polio eradication programme, told a news briefing in Geneva. Most victims are under two years old and are believed never to have been vaccinated or to have received only a single dose of the oral vaccine instead of the three which ensure protection from polio, he said. Half a million children in Syria have not been vaccinated against polio and debilitating diseases such as measles, mumps and rubella because of war, according to the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF).