Photo: Eyad Baba Agence France-Presse A woman administers a vaccine to a child in Zawayda, Gaza Strip, September 1, 2024.
Agence France-Presse in the Gaza Strip
Published at 8:46 a.m. Updated at 3:50 p.m.
- Middle East
The anti-polio campaign officially launched Sunday in the central Gaza Strip, where the UN has announced “humanitarian pauses,” the head of three vaccination centers for children in the area told AFP.
“There is a lot of drone flying over the central Gaza Strip and we hope that this vaccination campaign for children will be peaceful,” added Dr. Yasser Chaabane, medical director of al-Awda hospital.
“The vaccinations started at 9:00 a.m. local time. We opened the centers and we are receiving children aged one day to ten years old, and everything has been peaceful so far,” he continued.
The Gaza Health Ministry and U.N. agencies have listed 67 vaccination centers in hospitals, clinics and schools for the center of the small Palestinian territory. In the south, 59 centers are planned and 33 in the largely depopulated north. In these two areas, vaccinations will take place in a second and then a third phase.
This campaign, announced by Israel and the government of the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas in Gaza, aims to vaccinate more than 640,000 children under the age of ten in the besieged Palestinian territory devastated by nearly 11 months of war.
Polio, eradicated in Gaza for 25 years, has reappeared in the midst of these hostilities launched on October 7 by the deadly attack by Hamas in Israel.
200% Deposit Bonus up to €3,000 180% First Deposit Bonus up to $20,000Already on Saturday, polio vaccines were administered at Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis, in the southern Gaza Strip. But it was not until Sunday that the campaign officially began, which is supposed to give a first dose – two drops to be swallowed – to at least 90% of children under the age of ten in the territory.
The UN has sent 1.2 million doses of the nOPV2 vaccine. The second dose is due four weeks after the first.
On Thursday, the World Health Organization (WHO) announced that Israel had agreed to a series of “humanitarian pauses” of three days each in the central, then southern and northern Gaza Strip.
Denying “reports of a general ceasefire” to allow for the vaccination campaign, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said that Israel “will only allow a humanitarian corridor.”
Due in part to damaged roads and the displaced population, the UN had indicated that it might need an additional day in each area.
“One of the most beautiful days”
In the territory where almost all of the 2.4 million inhabitants have been displaced by the war, the tent camps are breeding grounds for epidemics, doctors continue to warn. Between promiscuity, lack of water and therefore hygiene, and malnutrition, the miners – half of the inhabitants – are the most in danger.
There, mobile teams go from tent to tent to administer two drops to each child before marking one of their nails with a black marker to certify their passage.
“With the war, new diseases have appeared,” reports Nesma Hefni, herself displaced who has seen the ravages of skin diseases and other rampant scabies.
“We want to protect our children so they don't get sick later,” she said.
For Louise Wateridge, from UNRWA, the UN agency in charge of Palestinian refugees, “this is one of the best days in Gaza since the start of the war.”
The health ministry in Gaza recorded 72,611 children vaccinated on the first day of the “pause.”
But, Ms. Wateridge told AFP, “we are now worried about what will happen after the 'pause'.”