At least 446,000 children in the Gaza Strip have been vaccinated against polio since the vaccination campaign began on September 1, World Health Organization (WHO) spokesman Tarik Jazarevic told a briefing in Geneva.
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“The polio vaccination campaign in the southern and central parts of the Gaza Strip ended yesterday, with more than 446,000 children vaccinated since the start of the campaign on September 1,” he said.
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Jazarevic added that WHO calls on all parties to continue to ensure compliance with the humanitarian pause during the campaign.
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Earlier, WHO representative in the Palestinian territories Rick Peperkorn said that Israel and Hamas agreed to three-day humanitarian pauses in three areas of the Gaza Strip to conduct a polio vaccination campaign. Each humanitarian pause will last three days for each region.
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At the end of July, the Palestinian Ministry of Health declared a polio epidemic in the Gaza Strip, citing fighting in the enclave that had continued for nine months as the main reason for the spread of the disease. Ahmed al-Rabii, an engineer for the water supply service of the coastal municipalities of the Gaza Strip, told that the polio epidemic was partly caused by a “water crisis” in the enclave, where wastewater treatment and discharge ceased after the outbreak of hostilities.
