UN-led campaign to vaccinate children against Polio kicks off in Gaza

By Niamh Kennedy, Ibrahim Dahman and Alex Stambaugh, CNN

(CNN) — The much-anticipated United Nations-led campaign to vaccinate hundreds of thousands of children in Gaza against polio began Sunday.

While a first group of babies received polio vaccinations in Gaza on Saturday, the program officially started a day later in Gaza’s “middle areas,” according to the UN’s agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA).

UNRWA, the main UN agency in Gaza, has set targets to immunize 640,000 children in the war-torn enclave, facilitated by a series of pauses in fighting agreed to by Israel. This equates to over 90% of children under the age of 10.

Palestinian health officials have stressed that a “real ceasefire” is needed for the polio vaccination drive to be fully successful.

During a news conference organized by the Ministry of Health in Gaza to officially launch the campaign, Deputy Health Minister Yousef Abu Al-Reesh said that vaccination teams are committed to traveling to “wherever there is a Palestinian person who needs this vaccination, despite the risks.”

“However, it must be said that if the international community wants this campaign to succeed, everyone knows that this virus does not stop at borders and can reach everywhere. There needs to be a ceasefire so that the teams can reach everyone who is targeted by this campaign,” the minister added.

The vaccinations are set to be carried out over three three-day periods, spanning September 1 to September 12.

One source familiar with the vaccination rollout previously told CNN that there are already concerns that the Israeli military won’t honor the pauses in fighting, highlighting how the IDF’s standard operating procedure is to pursue Hamas targets no matter what.

UNRWA’s Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini said that there is a “race against time to reach just over 600,000 children across the Gaza Strip in the coming days” in a post on X on Sunday.

“For this to work, parties to the conflict must respect the temporary area pauses. For the sake of children across the region, a lasting ceasefire is overdue,” Lazzarini wrote.

The World Health Organization’s (WHO) Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus also called for peace in a statement on X: “Children in Gaza are receiving much-needed polio vaccines today. Ultimately, the best vaccine for these children is peace.”

The return of polio to Gaza is a measure of the destruction wrought by more than 10 months of Israeli bombardment. The UN’s campaign comes after the highly infectious virus was found in sewage samples in the strip in June. A baby has since become the first person in Gaza in 25 years to be diagnosed with polio.

Before the war, Gaza had near-universal polio vaccine coverage, but it has since dropped below 90%. Polio mostly affects children under 5 years old, and can cause irreversible paralysis and even death. It’s highly infectious and there is no cure. It can only be prevented by immunization, according to the WHO.

The vaccination drive comes as aid agencies reported Israeli attacks on their convoys. One charity said an Israeli strike on a humanitarian vehicle in Gaza killed several employees of a transportation company. The Israeli military said it targeted “armed men” who had taken over the convoy.

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This story has been updated.