Polio vaccines for more than 1.25 million people have entered the Gaza Strip through the Kerem Shalom crossing, Israel’s civilian coordination agency for the Palestinian territories (COGAT) said on Sunday.
The agency said that international and local medical teams will administer the vaccines “at various locations in Gaza” in the coming days to children who have not yet been vaccinated against polio.
The vaccination drive will be conducted in coordination with the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) as part of “routine humanitarian pauses” to allow civilians access to health facilities.
The IDF said on Aug. 18 that COGAT has coordinated the entry of 2.82 million doses of polio vaccines into Gaza since the war broke out last year, following the Hamas terrorist attack on Oct. 7, 2023.
Polio is a highly infectious viral disease that spreads through the fecal-oral route or through contaminated water or food. It mainly affects children under the age of 5 and can cause total paralysis within hours of infection, according to the WHO.
Call for Humanitarian Pause
Philippe Lazzarini, the head of the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees, said on X on Friday that the 10-month-old baby had been paralyzed by the poliovirus.He said that delaying a humanitarian pause would increase the risk of spread among children in the enclave.
“It is not enough to bring the vaccines into Gaza + protect the cold chain. To have an impact, the vaccines must end up in the mouths of every child under the age of 10,” Lazzarini stated.
Poliovirus was detected in July in wastewater samples collected from Gaza’s Deir al-Balah and Khan Younis, at which hundreds of thousands of displaced Palestinian civilians have sought shelter.
Both UNICEF and the WHO have called for a seven-day humanitarian pause in Gaza to allow vaccination campaigns to occur and ensure that civilians can safely reach health facilities.
Humanitarian aid groups aim to launch two rounds of a polio vaccination campaign across the Gaza Strip in late August and September, with 1.6 million doses of vaccines expected to be delivered, the WHO said.
The agency stated that 95 percent vaccination coverage is required during each round of the campaign to reduce the spread of polio amid the “severely disrupted” health, water, and sanitation systems in the Gaza Strip.