WHO says Israel agreed to pauses in Gaza fighting for polio vaccination

Rik Peeperkorn, the World Health Organization’s representative for the West Bank and Gaza, told a press briefing from a video link Thursday that the pause would start September 1 and will be split into three 3-day phases.

“We have a preliminary commitment for area-specific humanitarian pauses during the campaign,” he said, adding that the pauses will roll out first in “central Gaza for three days, followed by south Gaza and then followed by north Gaza”.

An Israeli official confirmed to CNN that polio vaccinations will begin in Gaza on September 1. Each phase of the vaccination campaign is expected to take around seven hours, and during those hours, the vaccines will be able to enter the area on “pause” and be distributed.

Basem Naim, a member of Hamas’ political bureau, stated the group welcomed the push for a pause in Gaza to implement the vaccination drive.

“We are ready to cooperate with international organizations to secure this campaign.”

Since the war, Gaza’s near-universal polio vaccine coverage has dropped to just over 80%.

Peeperkorn told the UN press briefing that more than 90% coverage was needed to stop the outbreak in the besieged Palestinian territory.

He warned that the three-day periods “might not be enough to achieve adequate vaccination”, adding that it “has been agreed, when needed, the campaign will be extended by one day per zone, or even more when necessary”.

He stated that it would be a two-round vaccination campaign with a four-week interval between the first and second doses.

The resurgence of the virus – eliminated in most of the developed world – highlights the struggles facing Gaza’s two million residents, who have lived under Israeli bombardment since October last year.

Many people in the enclave are deprived of food, medical supplies and clean water, with up to 90% of the population internally displaced.

The aim of the immunization campaign is to vaccinate about 640,000 children under the age of 10 with two doses each. According to Peeperkorn, 1.26 million doses of vaccines and 500 vaccine carriers have already been delivered to the blockaded territory.

Polio mostly affects children under five years old, and can cause irreversible paralysis and even death. It’s highly infectious and there is no cure; it can only be prevented by immunization, according to the WHO.