NEW YORK: UN organizations today stressed the need for a humanitarian pause in the war-torn Gaza Strip to vaccinate over 640,000 children under the age of 10 against polio.
‘UNICEF, WHO and partners are preparing for a polio vaccination campaign aiming to reach at least 640,000 children,’ UNICEF Palestine said on X platform.
‘To safely and effectively reach children in need of vaccination, a ceasefire -or at the very least, ‘polio pauses’ in the fighting, is critical,’ it added.
It warned that ‘the spread of poliovirus is a very real threat to the children of Gaza’.
It announced its readiness as well as of its partners to administer life-saving vaccines, while adding that: ‘This requires critical polio pauses – humanitarian pauses in fighting to allow for two rounds of vaccination.’
On Sunday, UNICEF announced an urgent delivery of 1.2 million doses of polio vaccine type 2 to the Gaza Strip, along with cold storage equipment needed to maintain the vaccines’ temperature, all in cooperation with the World
Health Organization, UNRWA and other partners.
Gaza’s Ministry of Health and WHO reported on July 19 that the highly infectious poliovirus had been identified in sewage samples collected by UNICEF from Khan Younis and Deir al Balah, putting people living in overcrowded conditions without adequate water and sanitation at risk of contracting the lifelong crippling disease.
On Aug. 22, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO Director-General, noted that a 10-month-old unvaccinated child from Deir al-Balah was confirmed to have polio – the first case in Gaza in 25 years. Overall, WHO indicates three cases of paralysis have been reported.
Israel has proceeded with its genocidal offensive on the war-torn Strip in complete disregard of the International Court of Justice (ICJ), which ordered Israel in a legally binding decision to halt its military offensive in Rafah, which may violate its obligations under the Genocide Convention.
Israel has been waging a devastating war on Gaza since October 7, killing at least 40,476
Palestinians and injuring over 93,647 others.
Moreover, at least 10,000 people are unaccounted for, presumed dead under the rubble of their homes throughout the Strip.
Palestinian and international organizations say that the majority of those killed and wounded are women and children.
The Israeli aggression has also resulted in the forceful displacement of nearly two million people from all over the Gaza Strip, with the vast majority of the displaced forced into the densely crowded southern city of Rafah near the border with Egypt – in what has become Palestine’s largest mass exodus since the 1948 Nakba.
Source: Palestine News and Information Agency – WAFA