Gaza: UN humanitarians ahead of polio vaccination target

This article is published in association with United Nations.

The UN World Health Organization (WHO) said on Tuesday that 161,030 children under 10 have been vaccinated in central Gaza during the first two days of the UN-led mass vaccination campaign, surpassing the initial target of 156,000. The figure amounts to around a quarter of the total population they aim to reach – some 640,000 children.

“We think that we will need another day tomorrow to actually wrap-up the central zone completely,” said Dr. Rik Peeperkorn, WHO Representative for the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT).

Speaking from Gaza, he explained that day three of the campaign was continuing during the eight-hour daily pauses agreed by the Israeli military and Hamas fighters.

Each “humanitarian pause” is meant to last from 06:00 until 15:00 local time, with the possibility of adding an extra day if required.

Further rounds

The WHO medic explained that vaccination teams will shift to the larger southern zone on Thursday for another three days and most likely a fourth, before they turn to the northern zone. “Four weeks later the process will be repeated for the second round of vaccination,” he added.

Reaching the northern part of the Strip remains a concern, as the WHO has tried to get missions to the north over the last two weeks to provide hospitals with essential medical supplies.

“From the eight or nine missions we planned, only three or four could go,” he said. An Emergency Medical Team (EMT) was deployed to the Indonesian Hospital and a paediatric doctor to Kamal Adwan Hospital in addition to medications and other supplies.

The journey back to base involved a seven-hour wait for authorization to proceed to the holding point, with an additional 2.5 hours for screening at the checkpoint. Nearly 11 months into the war, the deconfliction process is still not effective, Dr. Peeperkorn maintained.

90 per cent rate

According to the UN health agency, at least 90 per cent of Palestinian children need to be vaccinated for the campaign to be effective and to prevent the circulation of polio within Gaza and globally.

The Gaza Strip had a high level of vaccination coverage across the population before the conflict began in October 2023. Due the impact of the war, routine immunization coverage dropped from 99 per cent in 2022 to less than 90 per cent in the first quarter of 2024, increasing the risk of vaccine-preventable diseases to children, including polio.  

Asked about whether it might be possible to assess other deeply worrying health issues such as malnutrition among children while the vaccination teams are working, Dr. Peeperkorn said that there was no spare capacity to do so.

“It’s a very intense campaign. You want to do it as quickly as possible over as least number of days as possible. With all the complexities now in Gaza, we decided we cannot add anything in this campaign. If we see that more activities are possible in the second round, four weeks from now, we will definitely do that.”

The polio vaccination campaign comes amid the massive destruction of Gaza’s healthcare infrastructure, including water and sanitation systems, and after health officials detected the first case of polio in Gaza in 25 years, in a 10-month-old baby in a refugee camp. The virus can cause paralysis and even death in young children.

Relentless danger

While UN humanitarian agencies welcomed the humanitarian pauses in specific areas to allow the large-scale polio vaccination campaign, they emphasized the urgent need for the immediate release of all remaining hostages and a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip. “Once these children have been vaccinated, they will go back to areas that in the coming week, we imagine, will be bombed again,” warned James Elder, spokesperson for the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF).

“There is nothing in that, that should be accepted as normal,” he continued. “And I think that everyone now accepts that the talks on ceasefires are just talks for us to continually think that there’s hope there.

“After 10 months, we might be a little bit naive. So, something has to give, and that again, has to fall on those leaders needing to represent their people.”