BEIRUT: Lebanon, which hosts more than 700,000 Syrian refugees, said on Friday it would vaccinate all children under five against polio after suspected cases of the crippling viral disease were found in neighboring Syria.

The WHO said on Thursday at least 22 people had acute flaccid paralysis, a symptom of diseases including polio, in Syria’s eastern Deir El-Zor province, which borders Iraq, most of them children.

Around 4,000 Syrians fleeing the civil war cross into neighboring countries each day, hundreds of them into Lebanon where many live in border towns or tented communities in rural areas with poor sanitation. There is no cure for polio, a highly infectious disease.