WHO hopes to start 2nd round of Gaza polio vaccination on October 14

The World Health Organization said on Friday it hopes to give hundreds of thousands of children in war-stricken Gaza, where it fears diseases are spreading rapidly, a second dose of polio vaccine from October 14.

The WHO said it was in talks on the date with Israel, which has been waging war against the Hamas terror group in the densely-populated Gaza Strip since Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack.

Much of the territory lies in ruins and the majority of its 2.4 million residents have been forced to flee their homes due to Israel’s military assault — often taking refuge in cramped and unsanitary conditions.

“We have requested the start of the second round of the polio campaign on October 14… and we expect that the vaccination should finish by October 29,” said Ayadil Saparbekov, the senior WHO official for emergencies in the Palestinian territories.

In August, Gaza reported its first confirmed case of polio in 25 years.

In a bid to prevent an epidemic of the highly infectious viral disease, the United Nations’ health agency launched a mass vaccination campaign effort in the territory on September 1 in coordination with Israel, aiming to administer an initial oral dose of vaccine to more than 640,000 children under 10.

Officials said the campaign was successful, with vaccination coverage reaching at least 90 percent of children.

Discussions on providing the second dose in October were underway with the Israeli defense and health ministries and partners on the ground in Gaza, Saparbekov said.

Two doses of vaccine must be administered four weeks apart to prevent the spread of the virus, which was detected in sewage samples in Gaza in June, according to the Global Polio Eradication Initiative.

The WHO is anxious to prevent an epidemic of variant type 2 polio virus (cVDPV2), after it was detected in a 10-month-old baby in Gaza in August.