Of the “humanitarian pauses” with uncertain contours must begin, Sunday 1Ahem September, to allow for large-scale vaccination against polio in the Gaza Strip, where a first case was recently confirmed in a 10-month-old baby.
The campaign, announced by Israel and the Hamas government in Gaza, aims to vaccinate more than 640,000 children under the age of 10 in the Palestinian territory, besieged and devastated by nearly eleven months of war.
The vaccines against the disease were administered on Saturday. But it was not until Sunday that the campaign was officially launched in Gaza, where polio had been eradicated twenty-five years ago. The UN has sent some 1.2 million doses of the nOPV2 vaccine, which consists of two oral drops. The second dose of the vaccine must be received four weeks after the first.
On Thursday, the World Health Organization (WHO) announced that Israel had accepted a series of “humanitarian pauses” three days each in the center, then in the south and in the north of the Gaza Strip. Dementia “Reports of a general ceasefire” To enable this vaccination campaign, the office of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced that Israel “will authorize[it] only a humanitarian corridor ».
Israeli authorities said the vaccines would be administered from 6 a.m. to 2 p.m. from Sunday to Tuesday in the center of the territory, where the first case of polio was confirmed – in a 10-month-old baby.
They also announced three days of vaccinations at the same time in the south and north of the Gaza Strip, whose 2.4 million inhabitants are now almost all displaced.
Due in particular to road damage and displaced populations, the UN had indicated that it might need an additional day for each area.
According to the UN, vaccination coverage of at least 90% is necessary during each phase of the campaign to prevent the epidemic.
