A health official said that a polio vaccination campaign began in Gaza on Saturday after the war-torn territory recorded its first case of the disease in a quarter-century.
Local health officials, along with the United Nations and NGOs, “are starting today the polio vaccination campaign in the central region,” Moussa Abed, the director of primary health care at the Gaza Health Ministry, told AFP.
The World Health Organization (WHO) said on Thursday that Israel had agreed to a series of three-day “humanitarian pauses” in Gaza to facilitate vaccinations, though officials had earlier said that the campaign was expected to start on Sunday.
After starting in central Gaza, vaccines are set to be administered in the southern region, followed by northern Gaza.
The campaign, which involves two doses, aims to reach over 640,000 children under 10.
WHO Deputy Director-General Michael Ryan told the UN Security Council this week that 1.26 million doses of the oral vaccine had been delivered in Gaza, with another 400,000 still to arrive.
The Ramallah-based Palestinian Health Ministry said earlier this month that tests in Jordan had confirmed polio in an unvaccinated 10-month-old baby from central Gaza.
Poliovirus is highly infectious, and most often spread through sewage and contaminated water, an increasingly common problem in Gaza as the Israel-Hamas war drags on.
The disease mainly affects children under the age of five. It can cause deformities, paralysis, and is potentially fatal.
Gazan resident Bakr Deeb told AFP on Saturday that he brought his three children, all under 10, to a vaccination point despite some initial doubts about its safety.
“I was hesitant at first and very afraid of the safety of this vaccination,” he said.
“After the assurances of its safety, and with all the families going to the vaccination points, I decided to go with my children as well, to protect them.”
Abed, the Health Ministry official, stressed on Saturday that the vaccine was “100 percent safe.”
Relentless Israeli bombardment has also caused a major humanitarian crisis and devastated the Palestinian health system.
With AFP
