The World Health Organization announced yesterday, Wednesday, that the first phase of the polio vaccination campaign in Gaza had been successfully concluded, during which 187,000 children in the central Gaza Strip were able to receive the first dose.
The disease has spread through the devastated Strip after the majority of the 2.4 million population were forced to flee their homes due to the Israeli aggression, into overcrowded shelters and evacuation centers under catastrophic conditions.
In mid-August, the first case of polio in the Gaza Strip in a quarter of a century was detected in a 10-month-old infant.
Since 2014, the World Health Organization has classified polio as a global health emergency, the highest level of warning the UN health body can issue.
The immunization campaign aims to vaccinate more than 640,000 children in the besieged Strip, which has been devastated by the war that has been going on for about 11 months.
Commenting on the completion of this phase, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said, “We are grateful for the commitment of all families, health professionals and vaccinators who made this phase of the campaign a success despite the poor conditions in the Gaza Strip.”
“We demand continued respect for the humanitarian truce, and we continue to call for a ceasefire,” he added.
More than 500 teams, comprising a combined total of nearly 2,200 health professionals and social workers, participated in the vaccination campaign, and children received these vaccines at 143 sites.
The large-scale campaign in the central Gaza Strip has ended, but the World Health Organization announced that the vaccination process will continue in four health facilities over the next few days to ensure that no child in the area is forgotten.
The World Health Organization is scheduled to launch a vaccination campaign in the southern Gaza Strip on Thursday, where it hopes to vaccinate 340,000 children within four days.