The first phase of the anti-polio vaccination campaign in Gaza has successfully concluded, with the first dose administered to nearly 200,000 children in the central Palestinian territory, the World Health Organization (WHO) announced on Wednesday, September 4.
The disease has spread across the ruined Gaza Strip, where most of the 2.4 million people have been forced to flee their homes in the face of an Israeli military offensive, many finding shelter in cramped and unsanitary conditions.
After the discovery of the first case of polio in Gaza in 25 years, a large-scale campaign began on Sunday, following the first vaccinations on Saturday, with the help of “humanitarian pauses” in the fighting.
Nearly 200,000 children vaccinated
The operation aims to vaccinate more than 640,000 children in the besieged territory, devastated by nearly 11 months of war, and the first phase in the center of the strip has already reached 187,000, according to the WHO.
“We are grateful for the commitment of all the families, health workers and vaccinators who made this phase of the campaign a success despite the harsh conditions in the Gaza Strip,” WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told X.
“We ask that humanitarian pauses continue to be respected. We continue to call for a ceasefire,” he added.
The WHO had estimated that it would have to vaccinate nearly 157,000 children under 10 in central Gaza, before admitting that it had “probably underestimated the population in this area”.
More than 500 teams, bringing together a total of nearly 2,200 health professionals and social workers, took part in this operation. The vaccines were administered in 143 sites.
The WHO is due to begin another vaccination campaign on Thursday, this time in the southern Gaza Strip, where it estimates it will vaccinate 340,000 children in four days.
- BFMTV.com
