World Health Organization Announces Gaza Fighting Will Be Paused for Vaccine Administration
The World Health Organization (WHO) has announced a humanitarian initiative to conduct limited pauses in fighting in Gaza to facilitate polio vaccinations for children following the first confirmed polio case in 25 years. These pauses, lasting three days in various regions, will enable health workers to vaccinate approximately 640,000 children under ten, starting on Sunday in central Gaza. The campaign has been coordinated with Israeli authorities, with planned tactical pauses to accommodate the vaccination efforts. The necessity for the campaign arose after a 10-month-old baby contracted the virus due to missed vaccinations amidst ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas, highlighting the urgent need to address health concerns in the region. WHO indicates that achieving at least a 90% vaccination rate is crucial to halt the virus’s transmission.
The U.N. World Health Organization announced Thursday that there will be limited pauses in fighting in Gaza to allow for polio vaccinations for hundreds of thousands of children after a baby contracted the first confirmed case in 25 years in the Palestinian territory.
Described as “humanitarian pauses” that will last three days in different areas of the war-ravaged territory, the vaccination campaign will start Sunday in central Gaza, said Rik Peeperkorn, World Health Organization representative in the Palestinian territories.
That will be followed by another three-day pause in southern Gaza and then another in northern Gaza, he said, noting the pauses will last eight or nine hours each day. He thinks they might need additional days to complete the vaccinations.
Peeperkorn says they aim to vaccinate 640,000 children under 10 and that the campaign has been coordinated with 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. Later he added, “It will happen and should happen because we have an agreement.”
These humanitarian pauses are not a cease-fire between Israel and Hamas that mediators U.S., Egypt and Qatar have long been seeking, including in talks that are ongoing this week.
An Israeli official said there is expected to be some sort of tactical pause to allow vaccinations to take place. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because the plan has not been finalized. The Israeli army has previously announced limited pauses in limited areas to allow international humanitarian operations.
WHO said health workers need to vaccinate at least 90 percent 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 waste. The baby boy was not vaccinated because he was born just before October 7th, when Hamas militants attacked Israel and Israel launched a retaliatory offensive on Gaza.
He is one of hundreds of thousands of children who missed vaccinations because of the fighting between Israel and Hamas.
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