Israel agrees to pauses in fighting for polio vaccination in Gaza
Israel has agreed to daily pauses in fighting in the Gaza Strip, so that a polio vaccination campaign can take place. That announced the United Nations Thursday.
In three areas of the Gaza Strip, there will be pauses in fighting for three consecutive days each, from morning to afternoon. Rik Peeperkorn, the World Health Organization’s representative for Gaza, said he received a commitment from Cogat, the Israeli defence ministry body responsible for Palestinian affairs.
According to Peeperkorn, the pauses will start on 1 September “for three days in central Gaza, followed by southern Gaza and then followed by the northern part of the strip”. An additional day per region may be needed to vaccinate at least 90 per cent of children. The daily humanitarian pauses start at 6.00 local time and end at 14.00 or 15.00.
Following the discovery of the polio virus in sewage water, the UN decided to vaccinate more than 600,000 children in the Gaza Strip against the virus in two rounds. Doses of vaccines for 1.25 million people have already been brought in through the Kerem Shalom border crossing. UN delegates had demanded a pause in fighting after nearly 11 months of war to allow hundreds of thousands of children in the war zone to be vaccinated.
Since the start of the war on 7 October last year, following Hamas' attack on the Israeli border area, many babies in Gaza have been unable to be vaccinated. Poor sanitary conditions in the coastal strip, where numerous displaced people are often crowded together and clean water is scarce, could allow the disease to spread quickly.
A Palestinian infant with polio inside a tent in a shelter for displaced people west of El-Zawaida in the central Gaza Strip, 27 August 2024 © PHOTO NAAMAN OMAR/APA IMAGES VIA ZUMA PRESS WIRE
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