WHO announces limited pauses in Gaza fighting to allow for polio vaccinations
UNITED NATIONS — The UN World Health Organization announced on Thursday that there will be limited pauses in fighting in Gaza to allow polio vaccinations for hundreds of thousands of children after a baby had first confirmed case in 25 years in the Palestinian territory.
The vaccination campaign, described as a “humanitarian pause” that will last three days in different parts of the war-torn area, will begin on Sunday in central Gaza, said Rik Peeperkorn, the World Health Organization’s representative in the Palestinian territories.
Then there will be another three-day pause in southern Gaza and then another in northern Gaza, he said, noting that the pauses will last eight or nine hours a day. He thinks they may need more days to complete the vaccinations.
Peeperkorn says they aim for Vaccinate 640,000 children under the age of 10 and that the campaign is coordinated with the Israeli authorities.
“I’m not going to say this is the ideal way forward. But this is a workable way forward,” Peeperkorn said of the humanitarian pauses. He later added: “It will happen and should happen because we have an agreement.”
These humanitarian pauses are not a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas that the mediators US, Egypt and Qatar have long sought, including in conversations going on this week.
An Israeli official said some sort of tactical pause is expected to allow vaccinations to proceed. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because the plan has not yet been finalized. The Israeli military has previously announced limited pauses in limited areas to allow for international humanitarian operations.
The WHO said health workers must vaccinate at least 90% of children in Gaza to stop the transmission of polio.
The campaign comes after 10-month-old Abdel-Rahman Abu El-Jedian was partially paralyzed by a mutated strain of the virus that vaccinated people shed in their feces. baby boy was not vaccinated because he was born just before October 7, when Hamas militants attacked Israel and Israel launched a retaliatory offensive against Gaza.
He is one of hundreds of thousands of children who have not received their vaccinations because of the fighting between Israel and Hamas.