UNITED NATIONS, August 16. /TASS/. United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has called on all parties to the conflict in the Gaza Strip to observe humanitarian pauses to conduct vaccination against polio in the enclave.

"I am appealing to all parties to provide concrete assurances right away, guaranteeing humanitarian pauses for the campaign. Let's be clear, the ultimate vaccine for polio is peace and the immediate humanitarian ceasefire. But in any case, a polio pause is a must. It is impossible to conduct a polio vaccination campaign with war raging all over," he said.

World Health Organization (WHO) Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said earlier that it a poliovirus had been detected in sewage water samples from the Gaza Strip. He said that this situation was alarming but quite predictable bearing in mind the deplorable state of the healthcare sector in the enclave after nine months of non-stop fighting.

He noted that the majority of hospitals in the Gaza Strip are non-operational, with diarrheal and respiratory infections, hepatitis A and other diseases raging there.