ReutersUnited Nations agencies and local health officials in the Gaza Strip are launching an ambitious campaign to vaccinate 640,000 children against polio.
The deployment follows a series of localized pauses in fighting between Israeli forces and Hamas militants, with the first scheduled to begin on Sunday.
The World Health Organization (WHO) says that to be effective, at least 90% of children under 10 years old must be vaccinated within a short period of time.
It comes after the first confirmed case of polio in 25 years was detected in Gaza, with a UN expert saying more children are likely to be infected and a wider outbreak could occur in the region if the virus is not tackled.
A video filmed a few months ago shows baby Abdulrahman Abu Judyan crawling early. But now that he is one year old, his mother Niveen – who lives in a crowded tent camp in central Gaza – worries that he will never be able to walk.
“It was a shock,” Niveen told the BBC, recalling her son’s recent diagnosis of polio, which left him partially paralyzed in one leg. “I didn’t expect it. Now he may not be able to crawl or walk and the child is not getting proper medical care.”
On October 7 – the day of the horrific Hamas-led attack on southern Israel that killed 1,200 people – newborn Abdulrahman was supposed to receive his routine vaccinations but never did.
During the ensuing war, the Abu Judyan family from the northernmost Gaza moved five times – first to Gaza City, then to various locations in the center, to Rafah in the far south, and back to Deir al-Balah.
About 90% of Gaza’s population has been displaced and with health services strained, most children are not regularly vaccinated, leaving them vulnerable to infections like Abdulrahman.
“I feel so guilty that he is not vaccinated. But I cannot vaccinate him because of our situation,” Niveen said as she rocked her son in his car seat. She desperately hopes that her son can be flown out of Gaza for treatment. “He wants to live and walk like other children,” she said.
The mother struggles to find clean drinking water for her nine children. Raw sewage flows through the streets near the makeshift shack where they live.
These are ideal conditions for the spread of diseases – especially polio, a highly contagious disease.
Since the virus was detected in wastewater samples taken in June, UN agencies have been racing to set up an emergency mass vaccination programme.
United States Environmental Protection AgencySome 1.3 million doses of the vaccine were recently brought in through the Kerem Shalom checkpoint by Unicef, the UN children’s agency. The agency had to keep them in cold storage at the right temperature to maintain their potency. Another shipment of 400,000 doses will soon be sent to Gaza.
On Thursday, the WHO said it had reached an agreement with Israel for a limited pause in fighting to allow for a polio vaccination programme to take place, starting in central Gaza but later spreading to the south and north. Each “humanitarian pause” is set to last from 06:00 to 15:00 local time for three days, with the possibility of extending by a day if needed.
Unicef’s Jonathan Crickx said it was vital that these temporary ceasefires were maintained.
“You cannot lead and conduct a polio vaccination campaign in a war zone. It is impossible,” he said.
“Families need to feel safe bringing their children in for vaccinations. But health care workers also need to be able to safely reach out to communities.”
“It is a huge effort,” Mr Crickx added. “Especially in a place like the Gaza Strip, where we know, for example, that roads are damaged, access is difficult, security incidents occur on a daily basis.”
More than 2,000 workers — mostly locals — are involved in the vaccination effort. Palestinian health officials say there will be more than 400 permanent vaccination sites — including health centers, hospitals, clinics and field hospitals — and about 230 so-called outreach sites, community gathering places where vaccines will be distributed.
Each child should receive two doses of oral polio vaccine in two doses, the second dose given four weeks after the first. It is important that the programme is implemented quickly to prevent mutations in the virus and disrupt transmission.
The polio variant causing the latest outbreak is a mutated virus from the oral polio vaccine. This is because the vaccine contains a weakened live virus that, in very rare cases, is shed by people who receive the vaccine and can then evolve into a new form that can start new outbreaks.
While doctors in Gaza are on high alert for polio infections in children, tests are being conducted at a WHO-approved laboratory in Jordan.
“There could be more cases of polio until this outbreak is contained, and this virus will paralyze more children,” Dr Hamid Jafari, director of the WHO’s polio eradication programme in the Eastern Mediterranean, told me from Amman.
The risk is very high for the entire region, he said. “The risk is of course not just for Gaza, given the high transmission capacity in Gaza, but also the risk of spreading to Israel, the West Bank and surrounding countries.”
However, the focus remains on Gaza – where children make up nearly half of the 2.3 million population.
The past year has taken away many loved ones, their homes, and their health. With no end in sight to the war, the hope is that at least one new source of suffering can be eliminated.
