Mom of Gaza boy with polio begs for help as Israel-Hamas war leaves family in tent camp: "Nothing is clean"
The mother of the boy who the World Health Organization says was diagnosed with the first case of polio reported in the Gaza Strip in 25 years, Neveen Abu El Jidyan, says she's been able to do very little for her son Abdul Rahman since he contracted the debilitating disease due to the dire conditions in the camp for displaced Palestinians where they're living.
"We haven't given him any treatments. We live in a tent and there is no medication," El Jidyan, 35, told CBS News on Tuesday.
El Jidyan, who has nine other children, was forced to move her family from the north of Gaza to a tent in Deir el-Balah because of the war. Abdul Rahman was one month old when her family first had to relocate, she said.
"Abdul Rahman was supposed to take his vaccination on the first day of the war, and our home was targeted and his medical booklet was left at home," she said. "As we were moving from one place to another, I couldn't give him the vaccination."
The majority of Gaza's 2.4 million people have been displaced from their homes and forced to relocate to a humanitarian zone designated by Israel's military that has been continuously shrinking due to new evacuation orders. The Israel Defense Forces say the orders enable it to continue carrying out operations against Hamas and other militants across Gaza.
The zone has been reduced to a coastal patch of ground of only 15.8 square miles — around 11% of the total Gaza Strip, the U.N. said this week. Officials with the global body also said the area has no services available, and the CBS News team that visited on Tuesday saw sewage on the ground near families sheltering in tents.
Abdul Rahman had been developing normally and was almost walking, El Jidyan said, when he started throwing up and got a fever.
"I took him to the hospital and they told me there is nothing they can do. They know his condition, but there is no treatment," she said. "When the virus hit him, he changed in one night."
El Jidyan said she believed the unsanitary conditions where her family has been forced to live caused her son's illness.
"Our living conditions — we don't have clean water, clean food. We live in a tent and nothing is clean here," she said.
Before her son got sick, "he was crawling and playing with the sand, but I washed him. It is impossible to keep things clean in this living condition. I breastfed him and gave him cereal and water without boiling it. We didn't have cooking gas."
Now, she said she can't access the care Abdul Rahman needs, and her neighbors in the camp are afraid of him.
"They are scared of us. They are scared of carrying him. We were waiting in line for food stamps and as soon as they saw Abdul Rahman in the line, they ran away," she told CBS News. "I can't cope with his illness, and my son is not recovering at all. It is difficult for him to recover in this situation and in such a dirty environment, and there is no medication."
El Jidyan's message to the world was to "please, someone have mercy on my son. I wish he could move his body like before. I pray no other children catch this virus. I want treatment for my child, whether in this country or abroad."
United Nations agencies have said they hope to get a new mass polio vaccination program underway this weekend, but UNRWA, the primary U.N. agency tasked with helping Palestinians, said Wednesday that "for this to happen, we need a humanitarian pause. We cannot vaccinate children under a sky full of bombs and strikes. We need humanity."
Efforts led by the U.S., Qatar and Egypt to broker a new cease-fire in the Gaza war continue, but there has been no indication of an imminent breakthrough despite multiple rounds held in recent weeks.