The World Health Organization (WHO), which is conducting a polio vaccination campaign, says it has exceeded its initial target of 100,000 children protected. The operation is continuing.
The anti-polio campaign in Gaza is going “well” so far, and this first round of vaccination will take at least another ten days, the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Tuesday, September 3.
“So we need to vaccinate 640,000 children across the entire Gaza Strip. We are actually doing two campaigns. We have started the first round now and the second round will be in four weeks,” Dr Rik Peeperkorn, WHO representative in the occupied Palestinian territories, told a news briefing.
The first vaccinations began on August 31, but the larger campaign began on Sunday, the date announced by the UN for a “humanitarian pause”.
“So far, it’s going well,” Dr. Peeperkorn said, speaking via video link from the Gaza Strip. “We hope that it will continue, and that all parties will contribute. We still have 10 days, at least 10 days” left for this first round of vaccination, he said.
161,000 children already vaccinated
Vaccinations have so far been carried out in the central area of the Gaza Strip.
The total number of children under ten vaccinated so far stands at 161,000, “exceeding the estimated target of 156,500 children” for this area, according to the WHO.
“We probably underestimated the population in this central area” of the Gaza Strip, Dr Peeperkorn explained.
The goal is to vaccinate 340,000 children in the southern part of the Gaza Strip, and 150,000 more in the northern part.
The war between Israel and the Gaza Strip was triggered in response to an attack by the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas in Israel on October 7. The attack resulted in the deaths of 1,205 people on the Israeli side, mostly civilians, according to a count by Agence France Presse based on official data.
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In response, Israel launched a major air and land offensive in Gaza that has so far killed at least 40,786 people, according to Hamas’s health ministry. The majority are women and minors, according to the UN.
The offensive caused a humanitarian and health disaster and the displacement of almost all of the territory’s 2.4 million inhabitants.
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