WHO: 'high risk' of polio spreading across Gaza

The World Health Organisation (WHO) said on Monday there was a high risk of the polio virus spreading across Gaza and beyond its borders due to the dire health and sanitation situation in the war-ravaged Palestinian enclave.

Ayadil Saparbekov, team lead for health emergencies at WHO in Gaza and the West Bank, said circulating vaccine-derived poliovirus type 2 had been isolated from environmental samples from sewage in Gaza.

"There is a high risk of spreading of the circulating vaccine-derived polio virus in Gaza, not only because of the detection but because of the very dire situation with the water sanitation," he told reporters in Geneva via video link from Jerusalem.

"It may also spill over internationally, at a very high point."

Reporting by Reuters.