MORE THAN 560,000 children aged under ten in Gaza have been vaccinated against polio during the first round of an emergency campaign, nearly a month after the first case of the disease in the region in 25 years was recorded.
It comes amidst a resurgence of the virus due to Israel’s military offensive in the region, which has seen 2.4 million residents forced to flee their homes and take refuge elsewhere, often in cramped and unsanitary conditions.
In July, the World Health Organisation warned that the polio virus was detected in wastewater samples in Gaza, and the Israeli military began to vaccinate its soldiers operating in Gaza as a result.
Last month, the first case of polio in Gaza in 25 years was recorded as a ten-month-old baby was paralysed due to the disease.
It prompted a massive vaccination effort targeting at least 90% of children under ten, which began on 1 September and was aided by localised “humanitarian pauses” in fighting.
The first phase of the campaign, which first brought vaccines to children in central Gaza, then the south, and finally to the hardest-to reach north of the territory, ended today.
In a statement today, the WHO said the 12-day campaign provided an oral polio vaccine to 558,963 children “following meticulous planning and coordination”.
“This involved the use of an extensive network of teams, vaccinating at selected fixed sites at health facilities and outreach posts,” it said.
“Mobile and transit teams actively reached out to families living in shelter homes, tents, and camps for the displaced, alongside community workers engaging families to raise awareness ahead of and during the campaign.”
A fresh campaign to provide a needed second dose is due to begin in about four weeks in Gaza, besieged for over 11 months.
WHO chief Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus hailed the campaign “a massive success amidst a tragic daily reality of life across the Gaza Strip”.
“We admire all the health teams, who conducted this complex operation,” he said, also voicing gratitude to the families for turning out in droves to get their children vaccinated against polio.
Poliovirus, most often spread through sewage and contaminated water, is highly infectious. It can cause deformities and paralysis, and is potentially fatal. It mainly affects children under the age of five.
WHO has hailed that area-specific humanitarian pauses were respected, allowing the campaign to go ahead, and has urged a broader halt in fighting to help establish humanitarian corridors and the delivery of desperately-needed throughout the war-torn territory.
“Imagine what could be achieved with a ceasefire!” Tedros said.
The current conflict in Gaza has been ongoing since Hamas’s 7 October attack, which resulted in the deaths of 1,205 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures. The count includes hostages killed in captivity.
Israel’s retaliatory offensive has killed at least 41,118 people in Gaza, according to the territory’s health ministry.
The UN human rights office says most of the dead have been women or children.
Separately, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees today said one of its employees was killed during an Israeli operation in the occupied West Bank, where raids have escalated since last month.
The United Nations agency, UNRWA, said the employee was its first to be killed in the Palestinian territory in more than a decade.
An @UNRWA sanitation labourer in the northern #WestBank was shot and killed on the roof of his home by a sniper yesterday.
— UNRWA (@UNRWA) September 13, 2024
This marks the first time an UNRWA staff member was killed in the West Bank in more than 10 years.https://t.co/HcZqWaDSWb
But he is among dozens of Palestinians killed during the large-scale Israeli operation which began days ago and is ongoing, with several more Palestinians dead since Wednesday.
UNRWA identified the employee as Sufyan Jaber Abed Jawwad, who worked as a sanitation labourer. It said he was “shot and killed on the roof of his home by a sniper” in Faraa refugee camp.
His death is in addition to those of six other UNRWA staffers the UN said were killed in the Gaza Strip on Wednesday during a strike on a shool-turned-shelter. It was the highest single incident toll for the agency, UNRWA said.
Mourners today carried Jawwad’s body through the streets of Faraa, with his blue UN vest resting atop the Palestinian flag that covered him.
In nearby Tubas, funerals also took place for other Palestinians, who were killed by an air strike.
A military statement today said Israeli forces had “conducted a 48-hour counter-terrorism operation” in the areas of Tubas, Tamun and Faraa – northeast of Nablus – killing “five armed terrorists” in an airstrike.
It added that a sixth militant was also killed.
Violence in the West Bank had already soared alongside the nearly 12-month-old war in Gaza but in late August Israel began its large-scale raids.
Major Israeli operations in the West Bank are sometimes occurring “at a scale not witnessed in the last two decades,” the United Nations human rights chief said this week.
The official Palestinian news agency Wafa said the military withdrew from Tubas on Thursday evening, allowing the funerals there to go ahead, after the air strike which the Palestinian Red Crescent said killed them on Wednesday.
“I woke up in the morning to the sound of an explosion,” Ahmed Sawafta, father of one of the dead men, told AFP.
The fifth person killed was buried today in Tamun, also in the northern West Bank.
Osaid Kharaz, who identified himself as a Hamas activist, told AFP at the funeral in Tubas that Israel “is attempting to impose a new reality and undermine the popular support for the resistance (to Israeli occupation) in the West Bank.”
Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant announced on 4 September that the military would use its “full strength” to strike Palestinian militants in the West Bank.
He said he had ordered the military to carry out air strikes “wherever necessary” in order to “avoid endangering soldiers”.
Days later, the European Union’s top diplomat Josep Borrell said Israel aimed “to turn the West Bank into a new Gaza.”
Israeli forces this week also carried out operations around the northern West Bank city of Tulkarem.
A military statement today reported four deaths “in the areas of Tulkarem and Nur Shams”.
It said “three of the terrorists were eliminated in an aerial strike on Wednesday, and the fourth terrorist was eliminated during close-quarters combat with the security forces”.
The armed wing of Palestinian militant group Islamic Jihad said that the strike killed three of its fighters.
Israel has occupied the West Bank since 1967 and has ramped up deadly raids in the territory since Hamas’s 7 October attack on southern Israel.
According to the Palestinian health ministry, at least 679 Palestinians have been killed in the West Bank by the Israeli military or settlers since 7 October.
At least 24 Israelis, including security forces, have been killed in Palestinian attacks or during Israeli military operations in the territory during the same period, according to Israeli officials.
With reporting from © AFP 2024
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