The Ministry of Health in the Gaza Strip announced yesterday, Sunday, that it was able to vaccinate more than 72 thousand children on the first day of the polio vaccination campaign in the central governorate of the Strip, despite the ongoing Israeli war.
This came in a statement by the ministry via Telegram, after the launch of a polio vaccination campaign in the central Gaza Strip governorate, which will extend to all areas of the Strip until September 12.
On August 16, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called for a 7-day humanitarian truce to implement a polio campaign targeting 640,000 children, which was directly supported by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) at the time.
This call came after the Palestinian Ministry of Health announced the registration of the first confirmed case of polio virus in the Gaza Strip, in a 10-month-old child.
The Ministry of Health said that medical teams in the central governorate were able to vaccinate 72,611 children on the first day of the emergency polio vaccination campaign in Gaza.
Thousands of Palestinians headed to the centers announced in the central governorate to vaccinate their children under the age of ten against polio.
According to medical teams supervising the vaccination operations in the centers of Deir al-Balah city (center), signs of fatigue and malnutrition appeared on hundreds of children who received vaccinations due to the difficult conditions they are living in as a result of the ongoing Israeli war on the Strip for about 11 months.
Earlier on Sunday, UNRWA said the vaccination campaign was in a race against time to reach more than 600,000 children in the Strip in the coming days.
On Saturday, the Ministry of Health in Gaza, UNRWA, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and the World Health Organization announced, during a press conference at Nasser Hospital in Khan Yunis (south), the launch of a polio vaccination campaign for children under 10 years old.
Over the months of war, health and human rights organizations have warned of the spread of diseases and epidemics in the Strip due to the shortage of medicines and vaccinations, and the difficult health and living conditions experienced by the displaced.
With American support, Israel has been waging a devastating war on Gaza since October 7, leaving nearly 135,000 Palestinian martyrs and wounded, most of them children and women, and more than 10,000 missing, amidst massive destruction and deadly famine.