A polio vaccination campaign began Saturday in central Gaza, after the United Nations announced Israel’s approval of a “humanitarian truce,” Agence France-Presse reported.
Director of Primary Health Care in Gaza, Musa Abed, said that the Ministry of Health teams, in cooperation with the United Nations and non-governmental organizations, began “today the polio vaccination campaign in the central region” of the Strip.
After being absent from the Palestinian territories for 25 years, the first case of polio was confirmed in Gaza in a ten-month-old child in Deir al-Balah, after the virus was detected in water samples collected at the end of last June in Khan Yunis and Deir al-Balah.
The United Nations has sent 1.2 million doses, and the vaccines are oral drops, not injections.
Palestinians who came with their children said they came to receive the first dose for fear of the spread of epidemics among children, almost all of whom are displaced.
Aaid Abu Taha, 33, came with his 11-month-old child to get the first dose.
He said that it is “a very important campaign to vaccinate against polio, in light of the crowding of displaced people and the spread of many diseases due to the ongoing Israeli war.”
He continued, “I came to have my son take the first dose of this vaccine because I was very afraid that my son would get sick.”
The World Health Organization announced on Thursday that Israel had agreed to a series of “humanitarian truces”, each lasting three days in the central, southern and northern Gaza Strip, to implement a polio vaccination campaign that includes 640,000 children.
