GENEVA (Reuters): United Nations officials are preparing to launch a polio vaccination campaign in Gaza on Sunday that will rely on a series of limited pauses in fighting between Israeli forces and Hamas militants holding out in the besieged enclave.
The World Health Organization says it will need to vaccinate at least 90% of the children in Gaza for the campaign to succeed but it faces huge challenges in the Palestinian enclave, which has been largely destroyed by nearly 11 months of war.
The campaign has been organised after the WHO said on Aug. 23 that a baby had been paralysed by the type 2 polio virus, the first such case in the territory in 25 years, and U.N. agencies appealed for an urgent vaccination effort.
Some 1.2 million vaccine doses have already been delivered to Gaza ahead of the campaign, which aims to vaccinate more than 640,000 children, a WHO official said on Friday. An additional 400,000 doses are en route to the territory, said Rik Peeperkorn, the WHO’s representative for the occupied Palestinian territories.
The planned pauses are unconnected with negotiations that have been underway for months to try to agree a halt in the fighting in Gaza and a return of Israeli and foreign hostages in exchange for Palestinian prisoners held by Israel.
COGAT, the Israeli agency that coordinates administration in the occupied Palestinian territories, said the pauses would be coordinated as part of a series of humanitarian pauses implemented periodically since the start of the Israeli campaign in Gaza last October.
Hamas has also agreed to the pauses, which the U.N. says are needed for the campaign to begin at all. A second round of vaccinations will be needed once the first round is complete.
The WHO has said the Israeli military and Hamas have agreed to three separate, zoned three-day pauses in fighting to allow the first round of vaccinations to be undertaken by U.N. agencies in coordination with the Palestinian health ministry.
More than 2,180 staff have been trained to provide vaccinations and information about the campaign to people in Gaza.
The pauses, due to run for three days between 6 a.m. and 3 p.m (0300-1200 GMT), will begin in central Gaza, before moving to south and then northern Gaza. However due to the logistical and security challenges facing the campaign, an extra day may be needed for each round, WHO officials have said.
Most of Gaza’s hospitals have been damaged or destroyed with only 17 out of the 36 hospitals in the territory partially functional and less than half of the 132 primary health centres still operational, according to WHO figures.
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