UNITED NATIONS, Sep 17 (IPS) – The head of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), Philippe Lazzarini, today confirmed that the first round of Gaza’s polio vaccination campaign had been successfully completed, reaching 90 percent coverage. The second round of the campaign is expected to begin in late September, giving Gaza’s children a second, crucial dose of the polio vaccine.
On Friday, the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT), a unit that monitors Israel’s policies during the occupation of the Gaza Strip, announced that 559,000 children in Gaza have been vaccinated. Additional efforts are being made to vaccinate children in the northern regions, where the most restrictions are in place.
Vaccination efforts have gone relatively smoothly so far, with Lazzarini saying: “Parties to the conflict have largely respected the various required ‘humanitarian pauses’, which shows that when there is political will, aid can be delivered without disruption.” Despite this, it is difficult to predict whether hostilities will remain inactive during the ongoing period of humanitarian pause.
Last week, an airstrike on the Al-Mawasi refugee camp killed 40 people and wounded more than 60, despite Al-Mawasi being considered a “safe zone.” The attack not only caused extensive structural damage to Gaza’s most populous refugee camp, but also overwhelmed local medical facilities and emergency personnel.
In addition, an airstrike on the Al-Jouni school-to-shelter in Nuseirat on 11 September caused 18 casualties, six of whom were UNRWA aid workers, bringing the number of aid workers killed in this conflict to around 280.
These attacks have hampered vaccination efforts and damaged key infrastructure, including roads, power lines and water treatment systems, increasing the spread of disease and limiting access to particularly vulnerable areas.
A spokesperson for the World Health Organization (WHO) said that health workers “need safe, unhindered access so they can visit households, markets, transit points and health facilities to check children for the distinctive purple dye applied to their little fingers when they are vaccinated. These efforts will provide an independent measure of the rate of vaccination coverage achieved and the reasons for any unvaccinated children.”
The British representative to the United Nations, Ambassador Barbara Woodward, told reporters that “mass Israeli evacuation messages and the use of heavy weaponry mean that nowhere in Gaza is safe. We join the Secretary-General in calling for respect for international law, in particular the principles of distinction, proportionality and precaution in attacks. We are appalled by the continued killing of aid workers.”
Israel’s commitment to a humanitarian pause must be honored so that the polio crisis can be effectively eradicated. These attacks must stop so that humanitarian workers can access all areas of the Gaza Strip. The second round of the vaccination campaign will be crucial to ensure that the outbreak does not spread further.
The WHO states: “Without the humanitarian pauses, the implementation of the campaign will not be possible… At least 95 percent vaccination coverage is needed during each round of the campaign to prevent the spread of polio and reduce the risk of its resurgence, given the severely disrupted health, water and sanitation systems in the Gaza Strip.”
A ceasefire is currently being negotiated, led by the US, Egypt and Qatar. But even if the polio epidemic is eradicated and a ceasefire is reached, experts estimate that the process of rebuilding Gaza will be long, difficult and costly.
A major reason for this is the extent of the damage done to Gaza’s infrastructure during this conflict. Nearly 70 percent of Gaza’s buildings have been irreparably destroyed. “There will be a huge task to help the people of Gaza rebuild. Early recovery includes clearing unexploded ordnance and debris and providing essential services,” Woodward added.
Critical infrastructures, such as schools and hospitals, have been destroyed or rendered unusable by their use as shelters, severely limiting essential services such as health care, education, access to food and water and sanitation.
The UN envoy to Sierra Leone stressed the detrimental effects of the war on the Palestinian people, saying that the ongoing war “risks creating a generation that is traumatized, uneducated, maimed, orphaned, homeless and, even more dangerously, wounded.”
In addition, the war has caused significant economic decline. Aya Jaafar, an economist at the UN’s International Labour Organization (ILO), stated: “Gaza has experienced an almost complete destruction of economic activity in all sectors.”
According to ILO estimates, around 200,000 jobs have been lost, equivalent to 90 percent of the pre-conflict workforce. Jaafar adds that emergency employment programs and continued humanitarian contributions will be needed to facilitate a stable environment for Gaza.
While it is too early to tell how long it will take to rebuild Gaza, Rami Alazzeh of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) estimates that “it will take decades and the international community must be prepared to invest tens of billions of dollars to rebuild Gaza.”
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© Inter Press Service (2024) — All rights reservedOriginal source: Inter Press Service