In Gaza there will be three short humanitarian pauses to allow vaccination against polio

The WHO announced that Israel will stop bombing in three specific areas of Gaza for three days.The polio vaccination campaign begins.

• Polio has returned to Gaza after 25 years, favored by the humanitarian disaster caused by Israeli bombs.
• In recent days, 1.26 million vaccines have arrived, but the bombs did not allow them to be administered.
• Now Israel has agreed to stop the raids for three days so that health workers can vaccinate children.

The World Health Organization (WHO) has announced that in some areas of the Gaza Strip there will be humanitarian pauses from bombings to allow vaccinations against polio.In recent weeks, the return of the disease to Palestinian territory was confirmed after 25 years and in recent days they have arrived 1.26 million of doses of vaccines.Their administration is difficult due to Israeli bombing but the negotiations have now led to the definition of humanitarian pauses of three days for several hours a day so as to allow the work of health workers.Israel has so far bombed the so-called several times humanitarian safe zones.

Polio in Gaza

The WHO representative for the occupied Palestinian territories, Rik Peeperkorn, announced that in some defined areas of the Gaza Strip there will be three days of humanitarian pause.

Israeli bombing will stop for three consecutive days between 6am and 3pm to allow health workers to administer polio vaccines to the population, in particular i children.In recent days a 10 month old baby it remained semi-paralyzed after contracting the disease, which had disappeared from the Gaza Strip since about 25 years but which has now returned, favored by the dramatic humanitarian context in which the territory finds itself.The sanitary conditions in Gaza are terrible due to the Israeli military offensive and this has favored the spread of diseases that are transmitted through contaminated water and food, just like polio.

Three humanitarian pauses for vaccines

In recent days in the Gaza Strip they have arrived 1.26 million doses of vaccine against polio, with the aim of starting a vaccination campaign that reaches approximately 640 thousand children.The objective is to reach 90 percent vaccination coverage throughout the territory, where the figure is constantly decreasing, if we consider that in 2022 the 99 percent of the population was vaccinated.

THE'World Health Organization and other health workers have, however, denounced the impossibility of administering vaccines under the constant bombings and this increased the pressure for a ceasefire on the Israeli authorities.Who returned the request to the sender, granting only the three half-day humanitarian breaks and only in three distinct areas of the Gaza Strip.The Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, he underlined that the agreement should not be interpreted as a ceasefire.