The disease has spread because most of Gaza’s 2.4 million residents have been forced to flee their homes due to the Israeli attack and take refuge in cramped and unsanitary conditions.
The World Health Organization (WHO) said on Tuesday that the polio vaccination campaign in Gaza has progressed better than expected. During the first two days, 161,000 children had received the first vaccine dose.
According to the WHO, the first round of the vaccination campaign will last another ten days.
The disease has spread because most of Gaza’s 2.4 million residents have been forced to flee their homes due to the Israeli attack and take refuge in cramped and unsanitary conditions.
After the first confirmed case of polio, the massive vaccination work started over the weekend. The WHO announced last week that Israel had agreed to three-day “humanitarian pauses” in the northern, central and southern parts of the region to vaccinate children.
It is planned to vaccinate around 640,000 children during the campaign. The goal is for at least 90 percent of the children in the region to receive the first dose of the oral polio vaccine. The second dose must be given no later than four weeks after the first.
WHO Representative in the Palestinian Territories Rik Peeperkorn said the organization was deeply concerned about the wider health situation in Gaza. According to him, only 16 of Gaza’s 36 hospitals are operational, and infectious diseases have increased enormously.
– Acute respiratory infection has been diagnosed in more than one million people, and they are mostly children, Peeperkorn said.
He added that more than 600,000 children have suffered from diarrhea.