Watch: Experimental Polio Vaccine Rolled Out to Hundreds of Thousands of Children in Gaza

Vaccine safety expert Dr. Suzanne Humphries joined CHD.TV’s Polly Tommey to discuss the WHO’s polio vaccination campaign in Gaza.

by Brenda Baletti, Ph.D.

Over 187,000 children under age 10 this week were vaccinated against polio in central Gaza during the first phase of a two-round polio vaccination campaign, the World Health Organization (WHO) reported.

The campaign, continuing today in southern Gaza, is set to conclude next week in northern Gaza. It will target about 640,000 children. Israel and Hamas agreed to a daily eight-hour ceasefire in the places where the vaccines are being administered, Reuters reported.

The course of treatment requires the children to receive a second dose of the vaccine in four weeks.

The campaign was launched after vaccine-derived poliovirus type 2 was detected in wastewater samples in central Gaza in June, and four children were reported to have acute flaccid paralysis, a condition with many possible causes, including the poliovirus.

One of the four children — a 10-month-old unvaccinated baby — tested positive for circulating vaccine-derived poliovirus type 2.

Vaccine-derived polio occurs when the attenuated poliovirus used to make oral vaccines regains its virulence and begins circulating, according to the WHO.

The oral polio vaccine is commonly used because administrators argue it has several benefits for mass vaccination in low-resourced areas, Dr. Suzanne Humphries, co-author of “Dissolving Illusions: Diseases, Vaccines, and The Forgotten History,” told CHD.TV host Polly Tommey in an interview today. (Humphries’ book includes an extensive history of polio and the polio vaccine.)

Because the oral vaccine doesn’t need refrigeration and doesn’t need to be administered by professional healthcare providers, it’s easier to use it for mass vaccination campaigns, Humphries said.

However, the oral vaccine also is responsible for creating the poliovirus now circulating and infecting hundreds of people globally each year.

Gazan children getting genetically modified vaccine developed by Gates Foundation

The vaccine now given to Palestinian children in Gaza is nOPV2, a novel oral polio vaccine, focusing on type 2 polio.

The nOPV2 vaccine is genetically modified to prevent it from mutating and regaining virulence. It is not fully licensed but was granted an emergency use listing by the WHO in 2023.

Nature reported that the nOPV2 vaccine — funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation — has already been shown to regain virulence in at least two countries.

Humphries said:

“Interestingly, we’re going to stop a war that has had absolutely no regard for children whatsoever. Israel is all of a sudden humanitarian and is going to stop a war because the U.N. and the World Health Organization asked them to, so they can go in and save all these children that have been potentially infected by a vaccine-derived poliovirus, by giving them a new genetically modified oral polio vaccine that has never been fully tested, that is released on emergency use.

“And most of the testing early on was done on people who are already fully vaccinated so that their chances of having a mutation are less because of that.”

Humphries said that, although the 10-month-old baby is partially paralyzed, he will likely recover the use of his limb. Most people who get polio recover the use of their limbs within 60 days, she said.

Poliomyelitis, the disease that affects the spinal cord and paralyzes the limbs, “can be induced with just toxins,” she said. “And if a virus is involved, it becomes more invasive in the presence of certain chemicals.”

Humphries said there’s been little or no discussion about the bombs dropped across Gaza, which have been “melting buildings, melting plastic, melting electricity and chemicals — not to mention what was in the bombs,” she said. “The amount of toxicity people in that region have had to endure is astronomical.”

We don’t even know most of the chemicals those people are being exposed to, she said. For example, “If they dropped bombs on any factories that were making pesticides, I mean, that’s enough to cause paralysis in lots of people around that area right there.”

Vaccine adverse events also aren’t being discussed. “Who’s going to follow up and look for adverse events?” Humphries asked. “Who is going to find problems in these kids if anything happens [with this novel vaccine]?”

It’s “the same old playbook,” she said, where a war or crisis is used to roll out a new, minimally tested vaccine.

“I just think that people in that region should be somewhat suspicious of what’s going on here,” she added.

Humphries, whose book details corruption within the WHO and the United Nations concerning disease and vaccines, also questioned why the agencies were focusing on vaccination rather than on more urgent and fundamental public health issues — created as a consequence of this war and across the country — in the refugee camps.

Gazans lack food, water and basic medical care, she said. And people are getting sick because the camps have no sewage systems, which could be remedied by digging latrines.

As of Aug. 19, at least 16,480 children have been killed as a direct result of the war, and thousands remain missing or dead, Common Dreams reported.

Many of those children starved to death and many others are facing hunger and malnutrition.

Watch CHD.TV’s interview with Dr. Humphries: