Professor Dr Abdelraouf Elmanama, Dean of the Faculty of Health Sciences at Islamic University of Gaza, has participated in an international event at Waseda University in Japan. The event featured a screening of the documentary film Gaza’s Silent Threat, which chronicles the efforts of medical teams to protect children from the “silent threat” of poliomyelitis in the Gaza Strip amidst the ongoing war.
Filmed during the summer of 2024, the documentary captures one of the most challenging vaccination campaigns in the world, exposing the catastrophic impacts of war on child health and highlighting the bravery and dedication of healthcare workers despite severe risks and resource shortages.
During his keynote address, Professor Dr Elmanama outlined the deteriorating healthcare situation in the Gaza Strip. He noted that the destruction of health infrastructure, disruption of supply chains, and interruption of routine immunisation programmes have severely compromised community immunity, significantly raising the risk of the resurgence of vaccine-preventable diseases.
Professor Dr Elmanama explained that the detection of the poliovirus in wastewater served as a critical indicator of viral transmission, occurring at a time when children are suffering from acute malnutrition and a total lack of safe water and sanitation services.
He further noted that the emergency polio vaccination campaign using the new oral vaccine (nOPV2) successfully reached hundreds of thousands of children despite wartime conditions. This experience, he emphasised, demonstrates that protecting child health is achievable when humanitarian access and international coordination are secured. Professor Dr Elmanama concluded by stressing that malnutrition, water contamination, and rising antimicrobial resistance represent interconnected threats that exacerbate the disease burden, necessitating a comprehensive and integrated public health response.