Palestinian health officials and United Nations agencies launched a polio vaccination campaign in the Gaza Strip on Sunday, hoping to prevent an outbreak in the territory ravaged by nearly 11 months of Israeli bombardment.
Authorities plan to vaccinate children in central Gaza through Wednesday before moving to more devastated areas in the north and south of the Strip, with the goal of vaccinating about 640,000 children. On Saturday, a few children were vaccinated before the campaign officially began.
“These are the early hours of the first phase of a massive campaign, one of the most complex in the world,” said Juliette Touma, communications director for UNRWA, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees.
“Today, parties to the conflict must respect these pauses in the areas to allow UNRWA teams and other medical workers to reach children with these two precious drops. It is a race against time,” Touma told Reuters news agency.
Israel and Hamas, which have yet to reach an agreement to end the war, have said they will cooperate to ensure the campaign succeeds.
The World Health Organization announced Thursday that Israel had agreed to temporarily suspend its military operations to facilitate the campaign. Preliminary reports indicated Israeli strikes in central Gaza early Sunday, but it was not immediately clear whether anyone was killed or injured.
Deir el-Balah and Nuseirat hospitals confirmed that the campaign began on Sunday. Israel said on Saturday that the vaccination program would continue until September 9 and last eight hours a day.
Vaccinations will take place at some 160 sites across the country, including health centres and schools. Children under 10 will receive two drops of the oral polio vaccine in two doses, with the second administered four weeks after the first.
Gaza recently reported its first case of polio in 25 years: a 10-month-old boy who is now paralyzed in one leg. The presence of one case of paralysis indicates that there may be hundreds more people infected but not showing symptoms, according to the WHO.
Most affected children have no symptoms and those who do usually recover in about a week, the UN health agency said. There is no cure for polio, only prevention. When polio causes paralysis, it is usually permanent. The disease can be fatal if the paralysis affects the breathing muscles.
The vaccination campaign faces many challenges, from the ongoing war to devastated roads and hospitals shuttered by the war. About 90% of Gaza’s 2.3 million people have been internally displaced within the besieged territory, with hundreds of thousands crammed into squalid tent camps.
Health officials have expressed concern about outbreaks as waste piles up and bombings of key infrastructure have sent foul water into the streets. Widespread hunger has made people more vulnerable to disease.
“We escaped death with our children and fled from one place to another for the sake of our children, and now we have these diseases,” said Wafaa Obaid, who brought her three children to Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir el-Balah to be vaccinated.