Israel’s military and Palestinian militant group Hamas have agreed to three separate zoned three-day pauses in fighting in Gaza to allow for the first round of vaccination of 640,000 children against polio, a senior WHO official said on Friday.
The vaccination campaign is due to start on Sunday, with the pauses scheduled to take place between 6am and 3pm (0300-1200 GMT), said Rik Peeperkorn, the World Health Organization’s senior official for the Palestinian territories.
He said the campaign would start in central Gaza with three consecutive daily pauses in fighting, then move to southern Gaza, where there would be another three-day pause, followed by northern Gaza. Peeperkorn added there was an agreement to extend the pause in each zone to a fourth day if needed.
“From our experience, we know an additional day or two is very often needed to achieve sufficient coverage,” Mike Ryan, WHO emergencies director, told the UN Security Council on Thursday during a meeting on the humanitarian situation in Gaza.
A second round of vaccination would be required four weeks after the first round, said Peeperkorn.
“At least 90% of coverage is needed during each round of the campaign in order to stop the outbreak and prevent international spread of polio,” Ryan said.
The WHO confirmed on Aug. 23 that one baby has been paralyzed by the type 2 polio virus, the first such case in Gaza in 25 years.
“We are ready to cooperate with international organizations to secure this campaign, serving and protecting more than 650,000 Palestinian children in the Gaza Strip,” Hamas official Basem Naim told Reuters.
The Israeli military’s humanitarian unit (COGAT) said on Wednesday that the vaccination campaign would be conducted in coordination with the Israeli military “as part of the routine humanitarian pauses that will allow the population to reach the medical centers where the vaccinations will be administered.”
Israel was continuing a “focused and intensive effort” to deliver aid to Gaza and coordinate the polio vaccination campaign with WHO and UN children’s agency UNICEF, Oren Marmorstein, spokesperson for Israel’s foreign affairs ministry, posted on X.
Deputy US Ambassador to the UN Robert Wood said it was important that Israel facilitate access and “ensure periods of calm and refrain from military operations during vaccination campaign periods.” He added that the United States urged “Israel to avoid further evacuation orders during this period.”
