9-day polio vaccine drive in Gaza gets underway
Jeremy Sharon is The Times of Israel’s legal affairs and settlements reporter
A polio vaccination drive for children in the Gaza Strip begins, aiming to vaccinate hundreds of thousands of kids over the next nine days.
The drive comes after an unvaccinated 10-month-old baby from central Gaza contracted polio and suffered partial paralysis earlier this month, in the first case of the disease in the enclave in 25 years.
The vaccination campaign will be conducted by the World Health Organization together with UNICEF and in coordination with the IDF’s Southern Command and the Defense Ministry’s Coordinator for Government Activities in the Territories agency.
The drive will be staggered across three geographic regions of Gaza, beginning in the central Strip on September 1-3, then in southern Gaza on September 4-6, and finally in northern Gaza on September 7-9.
The campaign, which involves two doses, aims to cover over 640,000 children under age 10.
A statement put out by COGAT says that the Israeli agencies “will work to ensure that the population can safely reach the medical centers where the vaccinations will be administered.”
According to the agency, COGAT and the international agencies involved in the campaign “conducted joint assessments, including the import of vaccines, medical and logistical equipment, refrigeration units for vaccine storage and transportation, the entry of polio-specialized medical teams into the Gaza Strip, [and] marking vaccination areas in the operational systems.”
COGAT says that over one million vaccine doses were brought into Gaza for the campaign over the last month and that enough vaccine has been brought into the Strip for 2.8 million people since the war started.
“According to the World Health Organization (WHO), approximately 90% of the population in the Gaza Strip was vaccinated against polio in the first quarter of 2024,” COGAT adds.
The organization also says that it maintains regular contact “with all relevant health system authorities and the international community to monitor the medical situation in the Gaza Strip” and has facilitated the establishment of 14 field hospitals in the territory as well as the import of 25,955 tons of medicine and medical equipment.
“Israel sees the prevention of a polio outbreak in the Gaza Strip as an important mission in the humanitarian effort,” says COGAT.
