Scientists have clarified that the Palestinian child who recently suffered from paralysis due to the outbreak of polio in Gaza was infected with a mutated strain of the virus that had been eradicated through vaccination, emphasizing that the case is a result of the "absolute failure" of public health policy.

The infection, which was the first discovery of poliomyelitis in the sector in over 25 years, caused paralysis in the lower part of one leg of a 10-month-old child who had not been vaccinated.

This child was one of hundreds of thousands of children who missed their vaccinations due to the fighting between Israel and Hamas.

Scientists monitoring the polio outbreak said the child's illness demonstrated the failure of the global efforts by the World Health Organization and its partners to address the serious issues in the campaign to eradicate the disease, which had been largely successful and was on the verge of eliminating the highly contagious disease.

Separately, a draft report prepared by experts stated that the World Health Organization's efforts were unsuccessful and represented a "severe setback."

The concerning strain of poliovirus developed from a weakened virus that was originally part of an oral vaccine, credited with protecting millions of children worldwide from paralysis.

However, this virus was removed from the vaccine in 2016 in the hope of preventing vaccine-derived disease outbreaks.

Public health authorities recognized that this decision would leave people unprotected against this specific strain, but they believed they had a plan to deter any outbreaks and contain them quickly.

Instead, this step led to an increase in thousands of cases.

In this context, Vincent Racaniello, a virologist at Columbia University who did not participate in the report and does not work for the World Health Organization, said, "It was a truly dreadful strategy. The decision to switch vaccines was based on an incorrect assumption, and the result is that we have more polio and more children with paralysis."

A draft version of the report commissioned by the World Health Organization and independent experts stated that the plan underestimated the scale of the strain in the environment and overestimated the officials' ability to eradicate the outbreak.

The report concluded that the plan led to outbreaks of vaccine-derived poliovirus in 43 countries, resulting in over 3,300 children being paralyzed.