6 December 2013 - The push to immunize all children against polio has been hampered by the ongoing crisis in the Syrian Arab Republic. WHO and UNICEF have appealed to all parties to cooperate, including through temporary pauses in hostilities where needed, to allow vaccination campaigns to take place and for all children to be protected.

When Dr Salah Salem Haithami, a medical officer with the World Health Organization (WHO), heard that polio had reappeared in the Syrian Arab Republic, his first thought was: Can I go there to help? He had been working for 12 years on polio eradication in Sudan, but just days later he was deployed to Damascus. 

Haithami’s second thought was for children in Yemen, his own country. “Polio does not have a passport – it can affect any child anywhere in the world,” he says. “My motivation is to help stop the polio outbreak in Syria and, in this way, to prevent children outside of Syria from being paralyzed for life.”