Last month we documented the BBC News website’s August 7th promotion of the Hamas health ministry’s false claim that the Gaza Strip had become a “polio epidemic zone” in a report by Tom Bennett:
BBC NEWS PROMOTES UNFOUNDED HAMAS HEALTH MINISTRY CLAIM
Over two weeks later, on August 23rd 2024, the BBC News website published a report by Yolande Knell and Lucy Clarke-Billings about the discovery of one case of Polio: “Baby contracts Gaza’s first case of polio in 25 years”. [emphasis added]
“A 10-month-old baby has been partially paralysed after contracting polio in Gaza, United Nations officials have said.
According to the UN, Gaza, now in its 11th month of war, has not registered a polio case for 25 years, although type 2 poliovirus was detected in samples collected from the territory’s wastewater in June.”
That report also tells readers about preparations for a vaccination operation:
“WHO has approved the release of 1.6 million doses of vaccine, UNICEF is coordinating their delivery along with cold storage units and UNRWA’s medical teams will administer the vaccines once they arrive in Gaza. […]
On 18 August, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said since the beginning of the war, 282,126 vials of the polio vaccine, sufficient for 2,821,260 doses, have been sent to Gaza.
It said in the coming weeks, an additional 60,000 vaccines will be delivered to vaccinate over one million children.
According to the IDF, entry to the Gaza Strip for vaccines and epidemic prevention is being facilitated by the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT),
“This includes the entry of medical teams and vaccines against the polio virus,” the IDF said.”
On August 26th the BBC News website published a report by UK-based BBC Arabic staff Ahmed Nour, Abdirahim Saeed, Lamees Altalebi and Paul Cusiac titled “Diseases spread in Gaza as sewage contaminates camps and coast” which cited unidentified “observers”:
“Health experts, though, are sounding the alarm about the spread of waterborne diseases, after a 10-month-old baby was partially paralysed after contracting polio – the first registered case in Gaza for 25 years.
UN and World Health Organization (WHO) officials also called for two one-week ceasefires so they can vaccinate 600,000 children in Gaza.
But observers say the delivery of vaccines would probably hit the same barriers affecting the flow of other humanitarian aid, making distribution slow and extremely difficult. The destruction of Gaza’s health care system will also make any vaccination programme an enormous challenge.
In a response to BBC Arabic, Cogat insisted there were no restrictions on medical aid.
In a later social media statement, Cogat said “an additional 60,000 polio vaccines will be delivered to vaccinate over one million children” in the coming weeks.”
On August 29th the BBC News website published another report by London-based Tom Bennett titled “Israel agrees to pauses in fighting for polio vaccine drive” in which readers were told that:
“Israel has agreed to a series of “humanitarian pauses” in Gaza to allow for the vaccination of children against polio, the World Health Organization (WHO) has said.
The campaign will aim to vaccinate around 640,000 children across the Gaza strip and will begin on Sunday, senior WHO official Rik Peeperkorn said.
It will be rolled out in three separate stages, across the central, southern and northern parts of the strip. During each stage, fighting will pause for three consecutive days between 06:00 and 15:00 local time.
The agreement comes days after UN officials said a 10-month-old baby had been partially paralysed after contracting Gaza’s first case of polio for 25 years.”
Bennett tells his readers that:
“Around 1.26m doses of the novel oral polio vaccine type 2 (nOPV2) are already in Gaza, with 400,000 additional doses set to arrive soon.”
However, he refrains from clarifying the part played by Israel to facilitate the delivery of those vaccine doses.
August 31st saw the appearance of a report by Smitha Mundasad headlined “What is the plan to give polio vaccines to children in Gaza?”.
“A series of “humanitarian pauses” to fighting in Gaza are due to begin on Sunday, to allow hundreds of thousands of children to be vaccinated against polio.
The agreement comes after UN officials said a 10-month-old has been partially paralysed after contracting Gaza’s first recorded case of polio in 25 years.”
Under the sub-heading “Why is polio back in Gaza?”, Mundasad tells BBC audiences that:
“Humanitarian groups say the virus has re-emerged because the war between Israel and Hamas has disrupted regular child vaccination programmes. It has also caused massive damage to water and sanitation systems.”
Mundasad does not however bother to clarify that on July 23rd, the WHO had put out a statement in which it noted that:
“On 16 July 2024, the Global Polio Laboratory Network (GPLN) notified the detection of six circulating variant poliovirus type 2 (cVDPV2) isolates in environmental samples from Deir al-Balah and Khan Younis in Gaza. Further genomic sequencing of these isolates by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta indicates that these isolates have close genetic linkage with each other and are also related to the cVDPV2 that was circulating in Egypt during the second half of 2023 – which was last detected in Egypt in samples collected in December 2023.
Based on the analysis of genetic changes in the isolates, the variant poliovirus could have been introduced in Gaza as early as September 2023.”
“The strain that infected the baby in Gaza had lingered in the environment and mutated into a version capable of starting outbreaks. It was traced to polio viruses spreading last year in Egypt, according to genetic sequencing, the WHO said.”
Mundasad also reports that:
“About 1.3m doses of the novel oral polio vaccine type 2 (nOPV2) are already in Gaza, with 400,000 extra doses set to arrive soon.”
She too fails to clarify Israel’s role in the supply of those vaccines.
Also on August 31st, the BBC News website published a report by Yolande Knell which currently goes under the title “Gaza polio vaccine rollout starts well, UN says”.
Readers are told that:
“Around 1.3 million doses of the vaccine were recently brought in through the Kerem Shalom checkpoint by Unicef. The agency has had to keep them in cold storage in its warehouse at the correct temperature to maintain their potency. Another shipment of 400,000 doses is set to be delivered to Gaza soon.”
And:
“Since discovering the virus in wastewater samples taken in June, UN agencies have been racing to set up an emergency mass vaccination programme.”
Once again BBC audiences are not told about the part played by Israel in facilitating that vaccination programme.
Knell’s report also states:
“The polio variant that triggered this latest outbreak is itself a mutated virus from an oral polio vaccine. This is because the vaccine contains a weakened live virus which in very rare cases is shed by those who receive it and can then evolve into a new form that can start new epidemics.”
However, Knell does not inform her readers that the strain apparently originated in Egypt and was already in the Gaza Strip before the war began.
On September 1st the BBC News website published a filmed report titled “Gaza children being given polio vaccine”.
“The UN’s World Health Organization says it aims to vaccinate 640,000 children in Gaza, weeks after the first polio case was detected in the region in 25 years.”
As we see, in the ten days between August 23rd and September 1st inclusive, the BBC News website published six reports pertaining to the topic of the vaccination programme against Polio which is now underway in the Gaza Strip.
While the BBC is obviously aware of the role played by Israel in coordinating and facilitating that vaccination campaign, only the first two of the six reports make any mention of that part of the story.
Five of the BBC’s six reports – including the one by Tom Bennett – note that the sole case of Polio discovered in mid-August is the first to have been recorded in the Gaza Strip in 25 years.
On August 12th CAMERA UK submitted a complaint to the BBC concerning Tom Bennett’s uncritical amplification of Hamas’ July 29th propaganda claim that the Gaza Strip is a “polio epidemic zone”, requesting the removal of that disinformation promoted by a terrorist organisation. Beyond an August 20th email informing us that it would take more time to address our complaint, we have not heard back from BBC Complaints.
That disinformation still appears online:
The anti-polio vaccinations for the Palestinians in Gaza are part of Israel’s accused genocide campaign. The intention is to make sure that all Palestinians do die – of old age.