Words: Jessica McKendrick (she/her)
CW: War and Genocide
Governments and policy makers prioritising personal strategy over humanitarian concerns bred a more common and insidious form of biological warfare: neglect.
In our modern world, disease is all too often isolated as an issue of biology; a crisis triumphantly averted through prescription or vaccine. Only once the red pill is swallowed do we learn of the real sickness: the one that runs through the veins of global health governance, the one which bloodies the hands outstretched to ‘help’. Far from being simply a biological phenomenon, disease acts as a symptom of plagued political forces.
Disease isn’t incubated in a vacuum. It thrives in the cracks of human society and apathy, metastasizing where political instability, war, and systemic failings leave people vulnerable. Epidemics are symptomatic of broader social dysfunction, where those caught between enemy lines suffer dual afflictions of both conflict and contagion. It is conflict that decimates healthcare infrastructure, displaces populations, and cultivates the conditions which allow viruses to spread.
The genocide in Gaza led to the declaration of its Polio epidemic in August, usurping the global battle to keep the virus at bay. The mass displacement caused by Israel’s onslaught, combined with the demolition of healthcare frameworks, has amounted to potent viral spread conditions, with scarce supplies of drinking water still at risk of viral contamination. Following 25 years of eradication in Gaza, Polio’s resurgence raises urgent questions. As we’re familiar from the virulent scope of COVID-19 during the 2020 pandemic, viral spread (or epidemiology) is dynamic and unpredictable, often relating to the adaptability and mutation of the viral DNA itself.
It’s thought that this strain of Polio virus was introduced to Gaza from its circulation in Egypt as early as September 2023, mutating from the oral poliovirus vaccine used in The Global Polio Eradication Initiative of 1988. While history remembers this vaccine as hugely instrumental in the near eradication of polioviruses globally, the weakened form of the virus it contains can have lethal effects. It is susceptible to replication and spread in areas where vaccination rates drop, and people are vulnerable to infection. With each round of DNA replication, the virus holds potential to revert to its active form, causing infection and paralysis in the previously rare, but now catastrophic, cases of ‘vaccine-derived paralytic polio’ we’ve seen emerge in Gaza. A degree of hindsight led officials to recognise their original efforts as an ‘unqualified failure’, when in just 4 years, outbreaks surged from 84 in 7 countries to 548 in 21.
Polio exists as one of countless examples of the international community’s failure to adequately respond to disease. As the World Health Organisation and humanitarian agencies grapple to make progress, efforts are hampered by systemic failings. Without trade embargoes or divestment, bureaucratic red tape will continue to be plastered over these wounds, in a feeble attempt to merely kiss them better.
The current fragile promise of ceasefire in Gaza appears as a long-anticipated antidote to this infection of global health governance, with an optimistic pledge to alleviate blockades of medical aid to those vulnerable. Yet history reveals a striking disconnect between epidemiological atrocities and much needed armistice.
On March 23rd 2020, United Nations Secretary General António Guterres called for a global ceasefire to support the public health response to what were the juvenile beginnings of the COVID-19 pandemic. This was the first global ceasefire appeal since the agency was founded in 1945. ‘The fury of the virus illustrates the folly of war’, Guterres stated. Given the fallout of the apocalyptic levels of global mortality and lingering political consequences of the virus, we can only agree. But little changed. Transparent offers to lay down arms failed to culminate a formal ceasefire agreement. By the autumn of 2020, the prospect of a global ceasefire was off the table.
While The West descended into the race to develop the first effective vaccine, it was the vulnerable populations who were left to bear the burden of global failures. Governments and policy makers prioritising personal strategy over humanitarian concerns bred a more common and insidious form of biological warfare: neglect. Global regions that remained in conflict throughout the pandemic lay exposed to the wrath of the virus. Vaccination efforts were obstructed not just by violence, but a deeply rooted mistrust in government and international organisations, fuelled by misinformation depicting vaccines as a malicious part of a foreign agenda.
With inequalities running through the veins of global health governance, epidemics in conflict zones like the polio epidemic of Gaza reveal a striking double standard as vulnerable populations are left to bear burden of global failures. As disease bleeds through the lines of warfare, health must not be wielded as a weapon of division. Instead, we must aim to construct effective global health diplomacy as a bridge for humanity.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cm2mnlg43k4o
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c2kjzk75eplo
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK545991
https://www.barrons.com/news/gaza-health-ministry-declares-territory-polio-epidemic-area-24da98d1
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/9/2/polio-returns-to-gaza-where-else-has-the-virus-re-emerged
https://www.who.int/news-room/spotlight/history-of-vaccination/history-of-polio-vaccination
