The first cases of polio in 14 years have been confirmed in Syria, prompting calls for fighting to be halted to allow children at risk to be vaccinated.
Ten cases of the disease - which has been reduced by 99% since 1988 due to a global eradication programme - have been discovered in the northeast and 12 more people are thought to be displaying polio symptoms.
The confirmed cases are among babies and toddlers who were "under-immunised", said World Health Organisation spokesman Oliver Rosenbauer.
He said the risk was high of it spreading across the region.
Save the Children said truces were needed to allow immunisation teams to reach children and prevent an epidemic of the disease, which can cause paralysis and death.
"Vaccination ceasefires would mean pauses in fighting to allow vaccination campaigns to take place across both sides of the conflict," it said.
"These ceasefires, also known as days of tranquillity, have previously been carried out successfully in Afghanistan, Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo."
Syria launched a vaccination campaign around the country days after the Geneva-based WHO said it had received reports of the cluster of acute flaccid paralysis cases in Syria's Deir el-Zour province.
The humanitarian crisis has brought an end to vaccination programmes Nearly all Syrian children were vaccinated against the disease - which begins with fever, fatigue, headache, vomiting, stiffness in the neck and pain in the limbs - before the civil war began more than two years ago.
Polio was last reported in Syria in 1999.
In 1998, polio was endemic in 125 countries and there were an estimated 350,000 cases but that had fallen to just 223 cases in 2012 and it was endemic in just Nigeria, Afghanistan and Pakistan.
However, WHO warns that if just one child remains infected the risk of the disease spreading again remains and eradication efforts in Nigeria and Pakistan have all been harmed by attacks by Islamist militants.
The Syrian conflict, which began as a largely peaceful uprising against President Bashar al Assad in March 2011, has triggered a humanitarian crisis on a massive scale.
More than 100,000 people have lost their lives and up to seven million more have been driven from their homes.
Save the Children's chief executive Justin Forsyth said: "The fact that an outbreak of polio has now been confirmed in Syria is another sign of the desperate and spiralling humanitarian situation there.
"The UN Security Council recently agreed on access for humanitarian relief across Syria. This polio crisis is a clear test of whether all sides of the conflict will respect the Security Council's presidential statement and allow unhindered humanitarian aid."
UN-Arab League envoy Lakhdar Brahimi, in Syria trying to organise peace talks, has warned of the of the war-ravaged country becoming like Somalia.
"What history teaches us is that after a crisis like this there is no going back," the Algerian diplomat told the Jeune Afrique website ahead of his first visit to Syria since December, when he angered the regime by saying all powers should be handed over to a transitional government.
"The real danger is a sort of 'Somalisation', but even more deep and lasting than what we have seen in Somalia."
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