ReutersUnited Nations agencies and local health officials in the Gaza Strip are launching an ambitious campaign to vaccinate 640,000 children against polio.
The rollout relies on a pause in a series of localized fighting between Israeli forces and Hamas militants, with the first window starting on Sunday.
The World Health Organization (WHO) says at least 90% of children under 10 must be vaccinated within a short period of time in order to be effective.
Previously, the first confirmed case of polio in 25 years was detected in Gaza, and a United Nations expert said that if the virus is not dealt with promptly, more children may be infected and a wider regional epidemic may occur.
A video shot a few months ago shows baby Abdulrahman Abu Judyan starting to crawl at an early age. But now that he is one year old, his mother Niven, who lives in a crowded tent camp in central Gaza, fears he will never walk.
“It was very shocking,” Niven told the BBC, recalling her son’s recent diagnosis of polio, which left one of his legs partially paralyzed. “I didn’t expect this. Now he may not be able to crawl or walk and the child won’t get proper medical care.
In the wake of the shocking attacks in southern Israel led by Hamas on October 7, which killed 1,200 people, newborn Abdelrahman should have received routine vaccinations, but he did not.
During the ensuing war, Abu Judyan’s family, from the far north of Gaza, moved five times – first to Gaza City, then to various locations in the city center, to Rafah in the far south, and finally Moved back to Deir al-Balah.
Around 90% of Gazans are displaced, health services are under severe pressure, and most children have had their regular immunizations interrupted, leaving them vulnerable to infection, as was the case with Abdelrahman.
“I feel so guilty that he didn’t get vaccinated. But because of our situation, I can’t give it to him,” Niven said, rocking her baby in her car seat. She desperately wants her son to be taken outside Gaza for medical treatment. “He wanted to live and walk like other children,” she said.
This mother struggles to find clean drinking water for her nine children. Raw sewage flows through the streets near the makeshift tents where they live.
The conditions were ideal for the spread of disease, especially the highly contagious polio.
Since the virus was discovered in wastewater samples in June, U.N. agencies have been rushing to develop an emergency mass vaccination program.
U.S. Environmental Protection AgencyUNICEF recently transported some 1.3 million vaccine doses through the Kerem Shalom checkpoint. It must keep them refrigerated in warehouses at the correct temperature to maintain their potency. Another batch of 400,000 doses of vaccine is about to be shipped to Gaza.
On Thursday, the World Health Organization said it had reached an agreement with Israel to temporarily suspend fighting to allow a polio vaccination program to begin in central Gaza before spreading to the south and north. Each “humanitarian pause” will last for three days, from 06:00 to 15:00 local time, and can be extended by an additional day if necessary.
Unicef’s Jonathan Cricks said it was crucial to maintain these temporary truces.
“You cannot lead and implement a polio vaccination campaign in an active war zone. It is simply impossible,” he said.
“Families need to feel safe when taking their children to get vaccinated. And health care workers need to be able to reach the community safely.
“This is a huge effort,” Mr. Kricks added. “Especially in a place like the Gaza Strip, where we know the roads are damaged, there are problems with access, and security incidents happen every day.”
More than 2,000 workers, mostly locals, were involved in the immunization effort. Palestinian health officials said there will be more than 400 fixed vaccination sites – including medical centres, hospitals, clinics and field hospitals – as well as about 230 so-called outreach sites, community gathering places, where the vaccine will be distributed.
Each child must receive two drops of oral polio vaccine in two doses, with the second dose given four weeks after the first. The plan must be implemented quickly to prevent the virus from mutating and interrupting transmission.
The polio variant causing this latest outbreak is itself a mutated virus from the oral polio vaccine. This is because the vaccine contains a weakened live virus that, in rare cases, can be excreted by the recipient and then evolve into a new form, causing a new epidemic.
As doctors in Gaza remain on high alert for potential polio infections in children, testing is being done at a World Health Organization-approved laboratory in Jordan.
Dr. Hamid Jaafari, WHO’s director of polio eradication in the Eastern Mediterranean, told me in Amman: “There will likely be more cases of paralytic polio before the epidemic stops, and the virus will paralyze more children.
He said the stakes were high for the entire region. “Of course, the risk is not limited to Gaza. Given the high transmissibility in Gaza, there is the potential for the virus to spread to Israel, the West Bank and surrounding countries.”
For now, the focus remains on Gaza, where nearly half of the 2.3 million people are children.
The past year has robbed them of many loved ones, homes and health. With no end in sight to the war, it is hoped that at least one new source of suffering can be eliminated.
