Gaza: Disease and war stalk children, despite vaccine success

This article is published in association with United Nations.

In Gaza, despite the success of the mass polio vaccination campaign so far, UN humanitarians warned on Wednesday that the very children they are trying to protect have been blighted by disease and heavily traumatized by ongoing fighting.

It’s been nearly 11 months since war erupted in the enclave following Hamas-led terror attacks in Israel. Today more than nine in 10 people have been forcibly displaced by the fighting, leaving them vulnerable to hunger, malnutrition and sickness.

“So far, we’ve been able to vaccinate 187,000 children and as we’ve been tent to tent and shelter to shelter,” said Louise Wateridge from the UN agency for Palestine refugees, UNRWA.

“The reality is that these vaccinations are happening in the middle of a war zone, while many other diseases, such as hepatitis A, are spreading,” the UNRWA spokesperson explained.

“Most of the children I’ve seen are covered in skin diseases and rashes, so while we’re doing everything we can to vaccinate for one disease, the inhumane conditions that are causing and spreading these diseases continues.”

Health hazards

The UNRWA spokesperson described the scene at one health centre where sewage had flooded the surrounding streets, forcing children to avoid the health hazard in order to receive their polio vaccinations.

“People who need everything – in addition to the polio vaccinations, medical supplies, hygiene products and clean water are absolutely critical to stop the spread of disease,” Ms. Wateridge insisted.

“What people need most is a ceasefire and they need it now.”

Wednesday marks the final day for vaccinations in the Gaza’s Middle Area which humanitarians say has been a resounding success.

In addition to UNRWA, the operation is a joint UN effort with the UN World Health Organization (WHO), the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF), partner NGOs and volunteers.

Despite the ever-present danger of strikes, families have brought their children to health centres and schools for the first of two vaccinations, a legacy of the enclave’s extremely strong support for vaccinations pre-war.

For those unable to move easily, aid teams have gone to find vulnerable families and children to ensure that all those under 10 receive their dose.

“It’s been very positive to see children coming out, showing us their little finger with coloured marker pen to proudly display that they’ve received this vaccine,” said Ms. Wateridge.

No rest for health teams

After working four days straight on the vaccination campaign in the Middle Area, some 2,200 health workers will move to southern Gaza to resume their work on Thursday morning.

Once this is done, efforts will turn to the north, before the whole process starts up again in four weeks, to give the second vaccine to boost protection levels.

The vaccine teams are able to do work with some level of security, thanks to the agreed humanitarian pauses with the Israeli military and Hamas fighters from 8am to 2pm – although the violence has not stopped by any means.

“The pauses are welcomed, but the bombing and the strikes have not stopped…our teams left to vaccinate, surrounded by the sound of strikes,” the UNWRA officer explained.

“While I cannot determine the locations of the strikes I can hear around me in the middle area, hearing them is unnerving for children and families as well as health care workers distributing the polio vaccines.”

Child tragedy

In a related development in Geneva, the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child heard Israeli representatives condemn Hamas for the “tragic” toll the war has taken on children.

Israeli ambassador to Geneva, Daniel Meron, told the panel of independent rights experts in a scheduled country review on Tuesday that Hamas was “embedded within the civilian population”, with tunnel shafts located “in children’s bedrooms in Gaza” and under schools, serving as “weapons arsenals and launch sites for rockets”.

“There have been weapons found under cribs. There have been weapons found inside teddy bears, in maternity wards, in hospitals,” he told the committee, which reports to the Human Rights Council and whose members are not UN staff.