United Nations, Ramadan 25, 1435, Jul 22, 2014, SPA -- The United Nations called for help Tuesday to vaccinate more than 750,000 Syrian children against polio, a potentially fatal viral disease. “Inside Syria, 765,000 children under the age of five live in hard-to-reach areas where conflict and restriction make it extremely difficult to reach them with humanitarian assistance including regular access to vaccines,” U.N. agencies said. According to the United Nations, there were 350,000 recorded cases of polio in 125 countries in 1988, and the disease surfaced in Syria again because of the civil war, which disrupted routine immunizations as millions fled their homes. Polio vaccination has declined from an average of 99 percent to 52 percent, while 60 percent of hospitals in Syria have been destroyed, and less than a third of hospital ambulances are functional, U.N. agencies said. “We got to a point where we had to work with very limited resources to defeat what had been a long forgotten enemy in this region,” said World Health Organization (WHO) polio specialist Chris Maher. More than 6.5 million children need assistance, said U.N. agencies, urging access for aid workers to help children trapped in war zones. The agencies said they completed the first phase of the polio vaccination campaign in the Middle East, helping 25 million children under the age of five. --SPA 23:23 LOCAL TIME 20:23 GMT www.spa.gov.sa/w