UN agencies wage uphill battle for vaccination after Gaza baby found to have polio
Supplies arrive in Tel Aviv as 2,700 aid workers gear up to immunize 640,000 children; COGAT vows ‘joint effort’ with international community
The Gaza Strip’s first recorded polio case in 25 years has health workers and aid agencies grappling with the steep obstacles to conducting mass vaccination in the war-torn Palestinian territory.
More than 10 months into the war in Gaza, Israel’s ongoing military operation, the dearth of aid entering the Strip, and the hot, humid summer all threaten the viability of a life-saving inoculation drive.
Still, equipment to support the extensive campaign — which United Nations agencies say could start on August 31 — has already arrived in the region.
The Palestinian Authority health ministry in the West Bank said last week that tests in Jordan had confirmed polio in an unvaccinated 10-month-old baby from central Gaza.
According to the UN, Gaza had not registered a case for 25 years, although type 2 poliovirus was detected in samples collected from the territory’s wastewater in June.
Poliovirus is highly infectious, and most often spread through sewage and contaminated water — an increasingly common problem in Gaza as the Israel-Hamas war drags on.
The disease mainly affects children under the age of five. It can cause deformities and paralysis, and is potentially fatal.
UN bodies the World Health Organization and children’s agency UNICEF say they have detailed plans to vaccinate 640,000 children across Gaza.
But the devastating war there — sparked when thousands of Hamas-led terrorists stormed southern Israel on October 7 to kill nearly 1,200 people and take 251 hostages — remains a challenge.
“It’s extremely difficult to undertake a vaccination campaign of this scale and volume under a sky full of airstrikes,” said Juliette Touma, director of communications for UNRWA, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees.
Polio’s return ‘says quite a lot’
Under the UN plan, 2,700 health workers in 708 teams would take part, with the WHO overseeing the effort, said Richard Peeperkorn, the agency’s representative in the Palestinian territories.
UNICEF would ensure the cold supply chain as vaccines are brought into and distributed across Gaza, spokesman Jonathan Crickx said.
Cold chain components, such as refrigerators, arrived Wednesday at Ben Gurion airport near Tel Aviv.
Some 1.6 million doses of the oral vaccine would follow, and are expected to enter Gaza on Sunday via the Kerem Shalom crossing from Israel, Crickx said.
The UN agencies plan to administer two doses each for about 95 percent of children under 10 in Gaza, according to Crickx. Surplus doses would cover expected losses to heat or other causes.
While Israel has repeatedly dismissed claims it was blocking aid into Gaza, relief workers have long complained of the many obstacles they face in getting supplies into the territory, which has suffered severe shortages of everything from fuel and medical equipment to food.
And once aid reaches Gaza, fighting, widespread devastation, crumbling infrastructure and lootings by masked assailants have all complicated delivery and safe access to the supplies.
Touma, who worked on polio response during wars in Iraq and Syria, said that “the return of polio to a place where it’s been eradicated says quite a lot.”
Gaza’s Hamas-run health ministry says more than 40,000 people in the Strip have been killed or are presumed dead in the fighting since October 7. The toll, which cannot be verified, does not differentiate between civilians and fighters. Israel says it has killed more than17,000 combatants in battle and another 1,000 terrorists inside Israel on October 7.
Inoculation impossible ‘without a safe environment’
Gaza’s health care system has been decimated, with “only 16 out of 36 hospitals… still functioning, and only partially,” Crickx said.
Out of those, only 11 facilities are capable of maintaining the cold chain, he added.
The vaccines would first be kept at a UN storage space in central Gaza, and then distributed to public and private health facilities as well as UNRWA shelters, “hopefully by refrigerated trucks if we can find some, otherwise by cold boxes” filled with ice packs, Crickx said.
Many Gazans now live in makeshift camps or UNRWA schools, making them hard to reach, said Moussa Abed, director of primary health care at Gaza’s health ministry.
Much of of the territory’s 2.4 million people have been displaced at least once during the war.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has called for two seven-day breaks in the war to administer doses.
Abed said that “without a safe environment for the vaccination campaign, we will not be able to reach 95 percent of the children under the age of 10, which is the goal of this campaign.”
Contacted by AFP, COGAT, the Israeli Defense Ministry agency that oversees civilian affairs in the Palestinian territories, did not directly mention the planned UN campaign, but said that “on the issue of polio, a joint effort will be made together with the international community.”
A COGAT spokesman promised “full cooperation.”
