Fighting to pause for vaccinations
ISRAEL’S military and Palestinian militant group Hamas have agreed to three separate, zoned threeday pauses in fighting in Gaza to allow for the first round of vaccination of 640,000 children against polio, a senior World Health Organisation official said yesterday. The vaccination campaign is due to start on Monday, with the pauses scheduled to take place between 6am and 3pm (local time), WHO senior official for the Palestinian territories Rik Peeperkorn said. The campaign would start in central Gaza with three consecutive daily pauses in fighting, then move to southern Gaza, where there would be another threeday pause, followed by northern Gaza.
There was an agreement to extend the pause in each zone to a fourth day if needed. ‘‘From our experience, we know an additional day or two is very often needed to achieve sufficient coverage,’’ WHO emergencies director Mike Ryan told the United Nations Security Council yesterday. A second round of vaccination would be required four weeks after the first round, Peeperkorn said.
‘‘At least 90% of coverage is needed during each round of the campaign in order to stop the outbreak and prevent international spread of polio,’’ Ryan said.
The WHO confirmed last week one baby had been paralysed by the type 2 polio virus, the first such case in Gaza 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,’’ Hamas official Basem Naim said. The Israeli military’s humanitarian unit said on Thursday the vaccination campaign would be conducted 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’’.
Israel was continuing a ‘‘focused and intensive effort’’ to deliver aid to Gaza and coordinate the polio vaccination campaign with the WHO and UN children’s agency Unicef, Oren Marmorstein, spokesperson for Israel’s foreign affairs ministry, said on X. — Reuters
❛ At least 90% of coverage is needed during each round of the campaign in order to stop the outbreak and prevent international spread of polio