The United Nations World Health Organization announced Thursday that it had reached an agreement with Israel for a limited pause in fighting in Gaza to allow Israeli forces to recover. polio vaccinations for hundreds of thousands of children after a baby contracted the first confirmed case in 25 years in the Palestinian territory.
The vaccination campaign will begin on Sunday, September 1, in central Gaza, with a “humanitarian pause” lasting from 6 a.m. to 3 p.m. for three days that can be extended by an additional day if necessary, said Rik Peeperkorn, WHO representative in the Palestinian territories.
The effort – which has been coordinated with Israeli authorities – will then move to southern Gaza and finally to northern Gaza for similar breaks, he told a U.N. news conference via video from Deir al-Balah in central Gaza.
“I’m not going to say it’s the ideal path to follow. But it’s a feasible path,” Peeperkorn said.
The vaccination campaign targets 640,000 children under 10 years old, who will each receive two drops of oral polio vaccine in two cycles, the second being administered four weeks after the first.
Peeperkorn said the humanitarian breaks are essential so families can get their children vaccinated and return to where they are staying before 3 p.m.
“We have an agreement on this, so we hope that all parties will stick to it,” he said.
WHO said health workers must vaccinate at least 90% of Gaza’s children to stop polio transmission. The campaign will involve more than 2,100 health workers from UN agencies and the Gaza Ministry of Health, working in hundreds of sites across Gaza and with mobile teams.
Humanitarian pauses are not a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas which the United States, Egypt and Qatar have long sought, including in discussions which are taking place this week.
Hamas is “ready to cooperate with international organizations to secure this campaign,” according to a statement by Basem Naim, a member of Hamas’ political bureau.
An Israeli official said before the plan was announced that some sort of tactical pause was expected to allow for vaccinations. The official spoke on condition of anonymity before the plan was finalized.
Israel did not comment Thursday. The Israeli military had previously announced limited pauses in some areas to allow for international humanitarian operations.
Robert Wood, the U.S. deputy ambassador to the U.N., urged Israel to avoid further evacuation orders for civilians during breaks and said workers need security to vaccinate children.
“It is particularly important for Israel to facilitate access to the agencies carrying out the vaccination campaign and to ensure periods of calm and refrain from military operations during periods of the vaccination campaign,” he said.
The campaign comes after 10-month-old Abdel-Rahman Abu El-Jedian was left partially paralyzed by a mutant strain of the virus that vaccinated people shed in their feces, scientists say. The baby was not vaccinated because he was born just before October 7, when Hamas militants attacked Israel and it launched a retaliatory offensive against Gaza.
He is one of hundreds of thousands of children who have not been vaccinated because of the fighting between Israel and Hamas.
Polio has been eliminated from most parts of the world as part of a decades-long effort by WHO and partners to eradicate the disease. Health workers in Gaza have been warning for months of the risk of a polio outbreak as the humanitarian crisis triggered by the Israeli offensive worsens.
Displaced Palestinians often live in crowded tent camps, near piles of garbage and filthy sewage that spills into the streets, which aid workers describe as hotbeds of diseases such as polio, transmitted through feces.
The strain of polio contracted by the 10-month-old came from a weakened virus that was originally part of an oral vaccine but was removed from the vaccine in 2016 in hopes of preventing vaccine-derived outbreaks. Public health officials knew the move would leave people unprotected against that particular strain, with scientists saying the case is the result of a “total failure” of public health policy.
