GENEVA: The World Health Organisation said on Friday it hoped to administer a second dose of the polio vaccine to children in northern Gaza from next week, after Israeli bombing had halted the drive.
The vaccination campaign began on September 1 after the beseiged Palestinian territory confirmed its first case of polio in 25 years.
A first round of inoculation was completed and the second round – essential to build up immunity – began as scheduled on October 14, first in central Gaza, then the south, aided by so-called humanitarian pauses in the fighting.
But the WHO said on Wednesday it had been forced to postpone the final phase in the north due to “intense bombardment”, making the conditions on the ground “impossible”.
Israel launched a major air and ground assault in northern Gaza this month, saying it wanted to stop Hamas militants regrouping there.
“We still have good hopes that we can do this campaign,” Rik Peeperkorn, the WHO’s representative in the Palestinian territories, said on Friday.
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“We have this window between October 28 and November 5 and I’m confident that it will happen. We need access to children, wherever they are,” he told a Geneva press briefing, via video-link from the Gaza Strip.
“It is critically important to finish. Everyone realises that – and all the parties of this conflict as well.
“We owe it to the children to finish this,” he said, voicing fears that the virus might spread beyond the war-destroyed territory’s borders.
“We are making plans that it will happen.”
Peeperkorn said 452,000 children had been vaccinated in central and southern Gaza, and 119,000 children in the north were awaiting their second dose.
The WHO says a minimum of two separate doses of oral vaccine are needed to interrupt poliovirus transmission, requiring 90 percent of all children aged under 10 to be vaccinated in a given community.
Typically spread through sewage and contaminated water, poliovirus is highly infectious.
It can cause deformities and paralysis, and is potentially fatal, mainly affecting children under the age of five.
The WHO was forced earlier this week to postpone the vaccination campaign.
“The current conditions, including ongoing attacks on civilian infrastructure, continue to jeopardise people’s safety and movement in northern Gaza, making it impossible for families to safely bring their children for vaccination” and for health workers to operate, it said on Wednesday.
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