A large-scale campaign to vaccinate hundreds of thousands of children against polio Gaza Strip The three-day campaign was launched on Sunday and aims to prevent an outbreak of the virus, which was recently reported in the territory for the first time in 25 years.
Palestinian health authorities and United Nations agencies plan to vaccinate children in central Gaza through Wednesday before moving to the most devastated parts of the north and south of the Strip.
The campaign began with a small number of vaccinations on Saturday and aims to reach approximately 640,000 children.
Ramadan Abed / REUTERS
THE The World Health Organization said on Thursday Israel has agreed to take a limited pause in fighting against Hamas to facilitate the campaign. However, in a statement released Saturday night, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said that “reports of a general ceasefire for the purpose of polio vaccination in Gaza are false.”
Instead, Netanyahu’s office said Israel “will only allow a humanitarian corridor” to allow polio vaccines to pass through Gaza.
“Cornered areas will be established for the safe administration of vaccines for a few hours,” Netanyahu’s office said. “Israel considers it important to prevent the outbreak of polio in the Gaza Strip, particularly in order to prevent the spread of epidemics throughout the region.”
The vaccination campaign faces many challenges, from ongoing fighting to devastated roads and hospitals shuttered by the war. About 90% of Gaza’s 2.3 million people have been internally displaced within the besieged territory, with hundreds of thousands crammed into squalid tent camps.
The campaign comes after 10-month-old Abdel-Rahman Abu El-Jedian was left partially paralyzed by a mutated strain of the virus that vaccinated people shed in their feces, scientists say. The baby boy was not vaccinated because he was born just before October 7, when the vaccination took place. Hamas militants attacked Israel and Israel launched a retaliatory offensive in Gaza.
The boy’s mother, Neveen Abu El Jidyan, said CBS News Tuesday She has been unable to do much for her son because of the dire living conditions in the Palestinian displacement camp where they live.
“We haven’t given him any treatment. We live in a tent and there is no medicine,” El Jidyan, 35, told CBS News.
The World Health Organization says the presence of one case of paralysis indicates there may be hundreds more people infected but not showing symptoms.
Most people with polio have no symptoms, and those who do usually recover within about a week. But there is no cure, and when polio causes paralysis, it is usually permanent. If the paralysis affects the breathing muscles, the disease can be fatal.
Vaccinations will be administered at about 160 sites across the country, including health centers and schools. Children under 10 will receive two drops of the oral polio vaccine in two doses, with the second given four weeks after the first.
Last month, Israel allowed 1.3 million doses of the vaccine into the country, which are currently stored in a refrigerated warehouse in Deir al-Balah. Another shipment of 400,000 doses is expected to be delivered to Gaza soon.
Ramadan Abed / REUTERS
Health officials have expressed concern about outbreaks as household waste piles up and bombings of critical infrastructure send putrid water flowing into the streets. Widespread hunger makes people more vulnerable to disease.
“We escaped death with our children, and we fled from one place to another for the sake of our children, and now we have these diseases,” said Wafaa Obaid, who brought her three children to Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir al-Balah to be vaccinated.
Ammar Ammar, a spokesman for the UN children’s agency, said he hoped both sides would adhere to a temporary truce in designated areas to allow families to access health facilities.
“This is a first step,” he told The Associated Press. “But there is no other solution than a cease-fire, because it is not only polio that threatens the children of Gaza, but also other factors, including malnutrition and the inhumane conditions in which they live.”
