Polio vaccine campaign begins in Gaza: health official

Palestinian Territories – AFP

A polio vaccination campaign officially began Sunday in the Gaza Strip where the United Nations has announced “humanitarian pauses” to allow for large-scale innoculation, a health official told AFP.

The campaign was announced after Gaza recorded its first polio case in a quarter of a century last month.

It officially began on Sunday in three health centres in central Gaza, a day after an unspecified number of children were vaccinated in the southern area of the Gaza Strip.

Children aged from one-day-old to 10 years arrived at the centres to receive the dose as drones flew overhead, said Yasser Shaabane, medical director of Al-Awda hospital in central Gaza.

“There are a lot of drones flying over central Gaza and we hope this vaccination campaign for children will be calm,” said Shaabane.

The campaign began at 9:00 am (0600 GMT), he said.

The World Health Organization (WHO) said on Thursday that Israel had agreed to a series of three-day “humanitarian pauses” in northern, southern and central areas to facilitate vaccinations.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, however, has insisted that these pauses were not amounting to any kind of cease-fire in overall fighting in Gaza.

The campaign aims to vaccinate more than 640,000 children in the besieged Palestinian territory, devastated by almost 11 months of Israel’s attacks.

Polio, which had been eradicated in Gaza for 25 years, reappeared in the midst of Israel’s attacks on the people of Gaza.

WHO has despatched 1.26 million doses of the oral vaccine to Gaza already.

The health ministry in Gaza has identified 67 vaccination centres — mostly hospitals, smaller health centres and schools — in central Gaza, 59 in southern Gaza and 33 in northern Gaza to administer the doses.

The second dose of the vaccine must be given four weeks after the first.