Articles for tag: blocks, East, efforts, Gaza, Health, Israel, Ministry, Palestinian, Polio, poliomyelitis, vaccination

Israeli airstrikes in Gaza kill 35 amid brief pauses in polio vaccinations

CAIRO: Israeli forces killed at least 35 Palestinians across Gaza on Tuesday as they battled Hamas militants, Palestinian officials said, but brief lulls in fighting allowed doctors to administer polio vaccinations to children for a third day. The dead included four women in the southern city of Rafah and eight people near a hospital in the northern Gaza City, the Palestinian Authority for Civil Emergency said. Later on Tuesday, an Israeli airstrike killed nine Palestinians inside a house near Omar Al-Mokhtar Street in central Gaza City, medics said. Another strike struck near a college in Sheikh Radwan, a northern suburb

September 1, 2024

Gaza attacks claim 48 lives ahead of polio vaccination campaign

KARACHI: Israeli airstrikes have resulted in at least 48 deaths in the Gaza Strip, Palestinian health officials said on Saturday. This escalation of violence came amid clashes in central and southern Gaza, shortly before the planned polio vaccination campaign began. The United Nations plans to vaccinate about 640,000 children in Gaza against polio, subject to a daily eight-hour ceasefire between Israeli forces and Hamas fighters in certain areas of the besieged territory. Yousef Abu Al-Reesh, Gaza’s deputy health minister, said vaccination teams would try to cover as many areas as possible, but stressed that only a complete ceasefire would ensure

August 31, 2024

Polio vaccination campaign begins in Gaza as WHO secures humanitarian pause

Listen to the article 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

August 16, 2024

UN chief calls for urgent ‘stop to polio’ in Gaza amid escalating humanitarian crisis

The UN chief on Friday highlighted the severe humanitarian crisis in Gaza and called for a critical “polio pause” to facilitate a major vaccination campaign. Describing Gaza as a “humanitarian free fall”, Antonio Guterres told reporters at a news conference: “Just when it seems the situation could not get any worse for the Palestinians in Gaza, suffering is mounting and the world is watching.” Noting that detections of the polio virus in sewage samples from Khan Younis and Deir al-Balah have heightened fears, with “hundreds of thousands of children in Gaza at risk”, Guterres said: “Polio does not care about

August 4, 2024

Featured Pakistan

Punjab reports first case of polio in 2024

A boy receives polio vaccine drops during a polio campaign in a low-income neighborhood in Karachi, Pakistan, April 9, 2018. — Reuters The Chakwal boy was paralyzed by wild poliovirus 1, officials say. At least nine cases have been reported from Balochistan. In Sindh, the polio virus has been detected in at least two children. ISLAMABAD: A six-year-old boy from Chakwal, Punjab, has been diagnosed with polio virus just a day after two new cases were reported in the country, taking the total toll to 12. A report from The news citing a Polio Eradication Initiative (PEI) official said on

July 20, 2024

Ninth polio case in Pakistan this year reported from Zhob, Balochistan

Health worker giving polio drops to a child in a town in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. — UNICEF/ Archive Multiple doses of polio immunization are recommended. Six anti-polio programs were conducted this year. Various strategies are adopted to protect children. The number of polio virus cases in Pakistan has risen to nine with the new one reported in Balochistan’s Zhob district. The new case of polio virus was confirmed on Saturday in a one-and-a-half-year-old child hailing from Union Council 2 of Zhob in Hassanzai (Urban) District. The Prime Minister’s Coordinator for National Health Services Dr Malik Mukhtar Ahmad said nine children have

June 25, 2024

Fifth case of polio diagnosed in Balochistan

A young boy gets vaccinated in Lahore’s Maraghzar Colony. — WHO/Archive This is the sixth case of polio from Pakistan. Five cases, so far, have been diagnosed from Balochistan. One case was reported from Sindh this year. An 18-month-old child has been diagnosed with polio virus in Balochistan’s Qilla Abdullah district, the provincial health department said on Tuesday. This is the sixth polio case from Pakistan and the fifth from Balochistan alone in 2024. One case was reported from Sindh this year. Meanwhile, it was the second such case reported from Qilla Abdullah area. Earlier, cases of the virus from

June 2, 2024

Polio virus cripples another child in Sikarpur, Sindh

A representational image showing a health worker administering polio vaccine drops to a child. — AFP/File WPV1 paralyzes a 2.5-year-old child in Sikarpur district of Sindh. Previously, three cases of polio virus were reported in Balochistan. Anwar-ul-Haq took charge of the country’s anti-polio programme. ISLAMABAD: The Pakistan Polio Program on Saturday announced another child paralyzed by wild polio virus type 1 (WPV1) in Sikarpur district of Sindh, bringing the total number of cases in the country this year to four. The Regional Polio Eradication Reference Laboratory at the National Institute of Health (NIH) in Islamabad notified that WPV1 was detected

May 25, 2024