A ten-month-old boy in the Gaza Strip was recently paralysed by poliovirus – the first such case in the region this century. Israel and Hamas have agreed to a limited ceasefire to allow 640,000 children in the enclave to be vaccinated against the virus.
We asked a virologist to explain how the virus emerged in the region after all this time, and how it will be dealt with.
Given that polio was all but eradicated in this region of the world, how might the ten-month-old baby in Gaza have caught it?
