Around 640,000 Palestinian children will be vaccinated against polio during temporary humanitarian pauses in Gaza. Source: Kashfi Halford via Flickr.
Israel has agreed to three-day temporary “humanitarian” pauses in the Gaza Strip to allow the distribution of polio vaccinations of around 640,000 children, said a World Health Organization (WHO) official on Thursday.
Beginning today, the pauses will take place for three days in separate areas of Gaza from 6am to 3pm local time (1pm to 10pm AEST), said Rik Peeperkorn, a WHO representative for the Palestinian territories.
“I’m not going to say this is the ideal way forward. But this is a workable way forward,” Peeperkorn said.
“It will happen and should happen because we have an agreement.”
The campaign will start in central Gaza, then move to southern and northern Gaza, pausing for three days in each region.
Peeperkorn added that the agreement outlined extending the period to a fourth day in each zone if needed.
On August 23, the WHO confirmed that a 10-month-old Palestinian baby has been paralysed by the type 2 polio virus—the first case of its kind in the region in 25 years.
“We are ready to cooperate with international organisations to secure this campaign, serving and protecting more than 650,000 Palestinian children in the Gaza Strip,” A Hamas official Basem Naim told Reuters.
“[The agreement] came about after intense pressure from UN officials and the United States with Secretary of State Antony Blinken also reportedly appealing to Israel to allow this campaign to happen,” an Al Jazeera correspondent reported from the United Nations in New York.
On Wednesday, the Israeli military’s humanitarian unit said that the vaccination campaign would be carried out in coordination with the Israeli military “as part of the routine humanitarian pauses that will allow the population to reach the medical centres where the vaccinations will be administered”.
Humanitarian and medical organisations have reported that Israel’s 11-month offensive in Gaza has created unsanitary conditions, such as severe water and sewage crises, and have contributed to the rapid spread of diseases.
Israel has also been accused of targeting humanitarian aid workers in Gaza throughout the conflict over the past months.
Israeli attacks on Gaza have killed more than 40,000 Palestinians — including 16,5010 children — and displaced almost the entire population of 2.3 million since 7 October, according to Palestinian health authorities.
