Geneva: The World Health Organisation (WHO) announced that it has reached an agreement with Israel on Thursday for 'limited pauses' in the ongoing fighting in Gaza to allow for polio vaccinations for hundreds of thousands of children after a baby contracted the first case after 25 years recently. These 'humanitarian pauses' will last three days in different parts of the war-torn country.
The vaccination campaign will start work on Sunday (September 1) in central Gaza, said Rik Peeperkorn, WHO's representative in the Palestinian territories. This will be followed by another three-day pause in southern Gaza and another pause in northern Gaza. Peeperkorn said these pauses will last eight to nine hours every day and will involve 2,000 health workers from UN agencies and Gaza's Health Ministry, who may need additional time.
"We need this humanitarian pause, and that has been very clear. We have an agreement on that, so we expect that all parties will stick to that," said Peeperkorn, adding that the WHO aims to vaccinate 640,000 children under 10 years of age in a campaign coordinated with Israeli authorities. Hamas has also said it will cooperate with international agencies to secure this campaign.
Over 1.2 million vaccine doses delivered to Gaza
Peeperkorn on Friday said some 1.2 million vaccine doses have already been delivered to Gaza ahead of the September 1 campaign to vaccinate hundreds of thousands of children in the besieged war-ravaged territory. Some 400,000 additional doses are en route to the territory, he added.
Before the agreement, an Israeli official said there was expected to be some sort of tactical pause to allow vaccinations to take place. The Israeli army has previously announced limited pauses in limited areas to allow international humanitarian operations. WHO said health workers need to vaccinate at least 90 per cent of children in Gaza to stop the transmission of polio.
"We are ready to cooperate with international organizations to secure this campaign, serving and protecting more than 650,000 Palestinian children in the Gaza Strip," Hamas official Basem Naim told Reuters. This came as Israel continues to bombard areas across the Gaza Strip, killing 34 people on Thursday.
What we know about polio in Gaza?
Earlier this month, health authorities in Gaza confirmed the first case of polio in 25 years, when 10-month-old Abdul-Rahman Abu Al-Jidyan was partially paralysed by a mutated strain of the virus that vaccinated people shed in their waste. He was born just before the Hamas attack on Israel on October 7 and had not been vaccinated.
It is not clear how the strain arrived in Gaza but genetic sequencing showed that it resembles a variant found in Egypt that could have been introduced from September 2023, the WHO said. Aid workers say poor sanitation conditions in Gaza where open sewers and trash piles are commonplace after nearly 11 months of war have created favourable conditions for its spread.
The baby's mother Nivine Abu Al-Jidyan said she feared for her son after she was told by health officials they could do little to help him. "I was shocked that my son got this disease amid the war and the closure of border crossings, under these conditions and lack of medicine for him, it's a shock. Would he remain like this?" she told Reuters.
"He is my only baby boy. It's his right to travel and be treated; it's his right to walk, run and move like before...It is unfair that he stays thrown in the tent without care or attention," she added. The case is also a major setback for the global polio fight which has driven down cases by more than 99 per cent since 1988 due to mass vaccination campaigns.
(with inputs from agencies)
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