There were reports of both continued fighting and unusual calm in several parts of Gaza on Friday, after the World Health Organization said Israel had made “a preliminary commitment to area-specific humanitarian pauses“to facilitate an upcoming polio vaccination campaign aimed at stopping the spread of this debilitating disease among children in the war-torn enclave.
A baby boy has been left partially paralyzed after being diagnosed with polio earlier this month, the first case in Gaza in 25 years, according to the WHO. Abdul Rahman’s mother spoke to CBS News this week in the tent where she and her family are now living. She begged for help for her sonHe said there was no treatment available in the camp and deplored the poor sanitary conditions there.
Health workers have said the closure of many hospitals in Gaza, due to devastation from Israeli attacks and extremely limited fuel supplies, is contributing to the lower-than-normal vaccination rate in the territory since the start of the war between Israel and Hamas in October.
“Without humanitarian pauses, as we call them at the UN, a campaign that is already being conducted in incredibly limited and complex environments will not be possible,” Rik Peeperkorn, a senior WHO official for the Palestinian territories, said at a briefing on Thursday.
Peeperkorn said the vaccination campaign would take place in phases of three days each, starting in central Gaza and moving to the south and north of the territory. The goal is to provide two drops of the oral polio vaccine to more than 640,000 children under the age of 10. WHO said that for a successful rollout and to prevent international spread, at least 90% vaccination coverage in that age group is needed.
UN aid workers said 2,700 health workers in medical centres and mobile units would deliver and administer the vaccines from Sunday.
Peeperkorn said WHO and partner organizations were “ready to implement the campaign” and that preparations had been completed, with 1.26 million vaccine doses and 500 vaccine carriers brought to Gaza. He said an additional 400,000 doses would “come to Gaza soon.”
“Because of the insecurity, the damage, the road infrastructure and the displacement of the population, but also based on our experience with this type of campaigns globally and worldwide, the three days may not be enough to achieve sufficient vaccination,” he said. “When necessary, the campaign will be extended by one day per zone or even more if necessary.”
One concern raised by a medical professional on the ground in Gaza was how to keep the vaccines refrigerated. Polio vaccines must be kept refrigerated continuously before use, in what is called cold chain storage, or they spoil.
Dr. Majed Jaber, who works in Gaza’s coastal Al-Mawasi district, an Israeli-designated evacuation zone where tens of thousands of displaced Palestinians have sought shelter, said earlier this week that only about nine health care facilities in Gaza were still capable of facilitating cold-chain storage. He said there was no refrigeration in the tent camps or at most local medical facilities in the enclave, and that with each new mass displacement under Israeli evacuation orders, it becomes harder for medical professionals to organize care.
“What do we do? It really feels helpless,” he said.
The Palestinian Health Ministry said Friday that cold chain equipment would be transferred from one region to another as the polio vaccination program gets underway. The ministry released maps showing the locations of vaccination centers and said it had sent text messages to Palestinians in Gaza informing them of vaccination dates.
WHO’s Peeperkorn reported on Friday that cold chain equipment, including generators, arrived in Gaza along with the polio vaccines.
“Micro-planning is the most important part of any polio campaign. It looks simple but it is very complex,” he said, explaining that there would be fixed location teams, outreach teams, community points, mobile teams, special teams and transport teams as part of the vaccination campaign.
“That shows a little bit how complex the operation is, and I also want to emphasize that it is also part of the fragility of this operation,” Peeperkorn said. “We absolutely need all parties … to adhere to the agreement that we have, the humanitarian pauses, to make sure that people can move, that they can bring their children, that all these teams can do their work. We are talking about renting vehicles, renting trucks, motorbikes, etc. It is all part of the campaign. If all of this is linked together, I think we have a good chance of a successful campaign. So again, we call on all parties to help make sure that this happens as planned.”
Separately, the Israel Defense Forces said Friday it had ended its months-long operation in southern and central Gaza, in which it said 250 Hamas fighters had been killed. An Israeli military spokesman told AFP news agency there were currently no operations in the Khan Younis and Deir el-Balah areas.
An AFP journalist reported that Israeli artillery shelled western parts of Gaza City on Friday, while a medical source told the news agency that three people were killed in an Israeli strike near Khan Younis.
WHO Director-General Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said on Friday regarding the upcoming vaccination campaign that a complete ceasefire would be best for the health of Gaza’s children.
“The best medicine is peace,” he said.
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