Just 3 days for 640,000 children in Gaza to get vaccinated

TEHRAN (Defapress) - According to AP, the U.N. health agency and partners are launching a campaign starting Sunday to vaccinate 640,000 Palestinian children in Gaza against polio, an ambitious effort amid a devastating war that has destroyed the territory’s healthcare system.

The campaign comes after the first polio case was reported in Gaza in 25 years. The World Health Organization says the presence of a paralysis case indicates there could be hundreds more who have been infected but aren’t showing symptoms.

Most people who have polio do not experience symptoms and those who do usually recover in a week or so. But there is no cure, and when polio causes paralysis it is usually permanent. If the paralysis affects breathing muscles, the disease can be fatal.

Around 1.3 million doses of the vaccine traveled through the Kerem Shalom checkpoint and are currently being held in “cold-chain storage” in a warehouse in Deir al-Balah. That means the warehouse can maintain the correct temperature so the vaccines do not lose their potency.

Another shipment of 400,000 doses is set to be delivered to Gaza soon.

The World Health Organization says children typically need about three to four doses of oral polio vaccine — two drops per dose — to be protected against polio. If they don’t receive all of the doses, they are vulnerable to infection.

The vaccines will be trucked to distribution sites by a team of over 2,000 medical volunteers, said Ammar Ammar, a spokesperson for UNICEF.

The vaccination effort will not be easy: Gaza’s roads are largely destroyed, its hospitals badly damaged and its population spread into isolated pockets.

WHO said Thursday that it has reached an agreement with the Zionist regime for limited pauses in the fighting to allow for the vaccination campaign to take place. Even so, such a large-scale campaign will pose major difficulties and problems in a territory blanketed in rubble, where 90% of Palestinians are displaced.

The three-day vaccination campaign in central Gaza will begin Sunday, during a “humanitarian pause” lasting from 6 a.m. until 3 p.m., and another day can be added if needed, said Dr. Rik Peeperkorn, WHO’s representative in the Palestinian territories.

In coordination with Zionist authorities, the effort will then move to southern Gaza and northern Gaza during similar pauses, he said during a news conference by video from Deir al-Balah in central Gaza.

The vaccination sites span Gaza, both inside and outside Israeli evacuation zones, from Rafah in the south to the northern reaches of the territory.

The Ramallah-based Health Ministry said Friday that there would be over 400 “fixed” vaccination sites — the most in Khan Younis, where the population density is the highest and there are 239,300 children under 10. Fixed sites include healthcare centers, hospitals, clinics, and field hospitals. Elsewhere in the territory, there will also be around 230 “outreach” sites — community gathering points that are not traditional medical centers — where vaccines will be distributed.