A health official said a polio vaccination campaign began in Gaza on Saturday after the war-torn region recorded its first case of the disease in a quarter of a century.
Local health officials along with the UN and NGOs are “starting today the polio vaccination campaign in the central area,” said Musa Abed, director of primary health care at Gaza’s health ministry. AFP.
The World Health Organization (WHO) said on Thursday that Israel had agreed to a series of three-day “humanitarian pauses” in Gaza to facilitate vaccinations, although officials had earlier said the campaign was expected to start on Sunday.
After starting in central Gaza, the vaccines are to be administered in southern Gaza and then in northern Gaza.
The campaign, which includes two installments, aims to reach more than 640,000 children under the age of 10.
Michael Ryan, the WHO’s deputy director-general, told the UN Security Council this week that 1.26 million doses of the oral vaccine had been delivered to Gaza, while another 400,000 had yet 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.
The polio virus is highly contagious and is most often spread through sewage and contaminated water – an increasingly common problem in Gaza as the Israel-Hamas war continues.
Also read: Polio vaccination season ‘inadequate’ in Gaza: WHO
The disease mainly affects children under the age of five. It can cause deformities and paralysis and is potentially fatal.
said Bakr Dib AFP on Saturday who brought his three children – all under the age of 10 – to a vaccination site despite some initial doubts about its safety.
“I was hesitant at first and very scared about the safety of this vaccination,” he said.
“After the assurances of his safety and with all the families going to the vaccination sites, I decided to go with my children to protect them.”
Abed, the health official, stressed on Saturday that the vaccine was “100 percent safe.”
The war in Gaza was sparked by Hamas’ unprecedented attack on southern Israel on October 7, which killed 1,199 people, mostly civilians, according to a AFP tally based on official Israeli data.
Israel’s military campaign of retaliation has killed at least 40,691 people in Gaza, according to the region’s health ministry. The UN rights office says most of the dead are women and children.
Israel’s incessant shelling has also caused a major humanitarian crisis and destroyed the health system.
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