Polio vaccine campaign begins in war-torn Gaza

A health official said a polio vaccination campaign began in Gaza yesterday, while an aid worker said a large-scale rollout would begin on Sunday, coinciding with a “humanitarian pause” agreed by Israel and Hamas. The vaccination drive was announced after Gaza recorded its first polio case in a quarter of a century earlier this month.
Local health officials along with the UN and NGOs “are starting today the polio vaccination campaign”, Moussa Abed, director of primary health care at the health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza, told AFP yesterday.
An unspecified number of children received the first dose of the vaccination, which involves two doses and is administered orally, at Nasser Hospital in the southern city of Khan Yunis.
Among them was Amal Shaheen’s three-year-old daughter, who was already in the hospital being treated for pneumonia.
“We have been in the hospital for 17 days... I spend all my days worrying about her,” Shaheen said. “Today she was vaccinated against polio to protect her, like all the children in the hospital have been vaccinated.”
The World Health Organisation (WHO) said on Thursday that Israel had agreed to a series of three-day “humanitarian pauses” in Gaza to facilitate vaccinations, though officials had earlier said the campaign was expected to start on Sunday.
An international aid worker told AFP that Palestinian authorities had organised a launch event on Saturday and that the vaccination campaign was still expected to begin in full on Sunday.
After beginning in central Gaza, vaccines are set to be administered in southern Gaza and then in northern Gaza.
The campaign aims to cover more than 640,000 children under 10 years old. Michael Ryan, WHO deputy director-general, told the UN Security Council this week that 1.26mn doses of the oral vaccine had been delivered in Gaza, with another 400,000 still to arrive
The Ramallah-based Palestinian health ministry said earlier this month that tests in Jordan had confirmed polio in an unvaccinated 10-month-old baby from central Gaza. Poliovirus is highly infectious and most often spread through sewage and contaminated water - an increasingly common problem in Gaza as the Israel-Hamas war drags on.
The disease mainly affects children under the age of five. It can cause deformities and paralysis and is potentially fatal.
Bakr Deeb told AFP yesterday that he brought his three children - all under 10 - to a vaccination point on Saturday despite some initial doubts about its safety. “I was hesitant at first and very afraid of the safety of this vaccination,” he said.
“After the assurances of its safety, and with all the families going to the vaccination points, I decided to go with my children as well, to protect them.”
Abed, the health official, stressed yesterday that the vaccine was “100 percent safe”. Israel’s military campaign has killed at least 40,691 people in Gaza, according to the territory’s health ministry. The UN rights office says most of the dead are women and children. Incessant Israeli bombardment has also caused a major humanitarian crisis and devastated the health system.