World
Polio Vaccination Campaign in Gaza Amidst Ongoing Conflict
Explore the challenges and efforts of the Polio Vaccination Campaign in Gaza amidst the ongoing conflict. This article highlights the importance of immunization and the resilience of healthcare workers in safeguarding children’s health.
Polio Vaccination Campaign in Gaza Faces Dire Challenges
As the initial phase of a polio vaccination campaign in Gaza concludes, a sense of futility permeates the atmosphere for many families involved. While they can protect their children from a potentially debilitating disease, they remain powerless against a far more immediate and lethal threat: the relentless Israeli bombings. Mohammed al-Sabti, a 32-year-old resident of Nuseirat in the central Gaza Strip, encapsulated this sentiment, stating, “Whether we vaccinate or not, it doesn’t make any difference. Death and danger are chasing us at every second.”
On Wednesday, an airstrike targeted a United Nations school complex in Nuseirat, a facility that was sheltering displaced Palestinians, resulting in the deaths of 18 individuals, including women and children, with many more injured, according to Palestinian officials. In response, Israel claimed that nine of the deceased were Hamas militants utilizing the site as a command-and-control center. The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) confirmed that six of the victims were its own employees.
Remarkably, just last week, this very site had been designated for polio inoculations, as noted by UNRWA. On the day of the airstrike, the agency reported that the vaccination campaign had successfully administered the first dose of the polio vaccine to approximately 530,000 children, coming close to their target of 640,000. The initiative, a collaborative effort between UNRWA, local health authorities, the World Health Organization (W.H.O.), and other partners, achieved its aim of reaching 90 percent vaccine coverage by the end of its first round, as celebrated in a social media post by UNRWA on Friday.
The execution of this campaign necessitated formal agreements for staggered temporary truces between Israel and Hamas, allowing health workers to safely administer vaccinations in designated areas. For the campaign to achieve complete success, both parties will need to come to similar agreements regarding “humanitarian pauses” for administering the second and final dose to each child next month, as highlighted by healthcare workers.