By Nidal al-Mughrabi
CAIRO (Reuters) – The United Nations, in collaboration with Palestinian well being authorities, started to vaccinate 640,000 youngsters within the Gaza Strip on Sunday, with Israel and Hamas agreeing to temporary pauses of their 11-month warfare to permit the marketing campaign to go forward.
The World Well being Organisation (WHO) confirmed final month {that a} child was partially paralysed by the kind 2 polio virus, the primary such case within the territory in 25 years.
The marketing campaign started on Sunday in areas of central Gaza, and can transfer to different areas in coming days. Combating will pause for at the least eight hours on three consecutive days.
The WHO stated the pauses will possible want to increase to a fourth day and the primary spherical of vaccinations will take slightly below two weeks.
‘COMPLEX’ CAMPAIGN
“This is the first few hours of the first phase of a massive campaign, one of the most complex in the world,” stated Juliette Touma, communications director of UNRWA, the U.N. Palestinian refugee company.
“Today is test time for parties to the conflict to respect these area pauses to allow the UNRWA teams and other medical workers to reach children with these very precious two drops. It’s a race against time,” Touma advised Reuters.
Israel and Hamas, who’ve thus far didn’t conclude a deal that may finish the warfare, stated they’d cooperate to permit the marketing campaign to succeed.
WHO officers say at the least 90% of the youngsters must be vaccinated twice with 4 weeks between doses for the marketing campaign to succeed, however it faces enormous challenges in Gaza, which has been largely destroyed by the warfare.
“Children continue to be exposed, it knows no borders, checkpoints or lines of fighting. Every child must be vaccinated in Gaza and Israel to curb the risks of this vicious disease spreading,” stated Touma.
In the meantime, Israeli forces continued to battle Hamas-led militants in a number of areas throughout the Palestinian enclave. Residents stated Israeli military troops blew up a number of homes in Rafah, close to the border with Egypt, whereas tanks continued to function within the northern Gaza Metropolis suburb of Zeitoun.
On Sunday, Israel recovered the our bodies of six hostages from a tunnel in southern Gaza the place they had been apparently killed not lengthy earlier than Israeli troops reached them, the navy stated.
The warfare was triggered after Hamas militants on Oct. 7 stormed into southern Israel killing 1,200 folks and taking greater than 250 hostages by Israeli tallies.
Since then, at the least 40,691 Palestinians have been killed and 94,060 injured in Gaza, the enclave’s well being ministry says.
(Reporting and writing by Nidal al-Mughrabi; Enhancing by Sharon Singleton)
