The U.N. health agency and its partners are launching a campaign starting Sunday to vaccinate 640,000 Palestinian children in Gaza against polio, an ambitious effort amid a devastating war that has devastated the territory’s health system.
The campaign comes after the first case of polio in Gaza in 25 years was reported – a 10-month-old boy who is now paralysed in one leg. The World Health Organisation says the presence of one case of paralysis indicates there could be hundreds more people infected but not showing symptoms.
Most people with polio have no symptoms, and those who do usually recover within a week or so. However, there is no cure, and when polio causes paralysis, it is usually permanent. If the paralysis affects the respiratory muscles, the disease can be fatal.
The vaccination campaign will not be easy: Gaza’s roads are largely destroyed, its hospitals are severely damaged and its population is scattered in isolated areas.
The WHO said on Thursday it had reached an agreement with Israel to pause fighting for a limited period of time and allow the vaccination campaign to go ahead. Still, such a large-scale campaign will pose great difficulties in a territory covered in rubble, where 90 percent of Palestinians are displaced.
On Saturday, the Gaza Health Ministry announced a smooth start to the vaccination campaign, with a small number of children receiving doses in the southern city of Khan Younis.
The three-day vaccination campaign in central Gaza will begin on Sunday, during a humanitarian pause that will last from 6 a.m. to 3 p.m., and another day can be added if necessary, said Dr. Rik Peeperkorn, WHO representative in the Palestinian territories.
In coordination with Israeli authorities, the effort will then move to southern and northern Gaza during similar pauses, he said during a video news conference from Deir al-Balah in central Gaza.
According to WHO, the vaccination campaign is targeting 640,000 children under the age of 10. Each child will receive two drops of oral polio vaccine in two rounds, the second of which will be administered four weeks after the first.
Vaccination sites are spread across Gaza, both inside and outside the Israeli evacuation zones, from Rafah in the south to the northern parts of the territory.
The Gaza Ministry of Health published a list of approximately 160 locations across the territory, including medical centers, hospitals and schools, where vaccinations will be carried out. Most of the locations are in Khan Younis and Deir al-Balah, where the population density of children under 10 years old is the highest.
Around 1.3 million doses of the vaccine passed through the Kerem Shalom checkpoint and are currently stored in a cold chain in a warehouse in Deir al-Balah. This means that the warehouse can maintain the correct temperature so that the vaccines do not lose their potency.
Another shipment of 400,000 doses is scheduled to be delivered to Gaza soon.
The vaccines will be transported by truck to distribution sites by a team of more than 2,000 medical volunteers, said UNICEF spokesman Ammar Ammar.
Organizing any kind of campaign that requires crossing the Gaza Strip and interacting with its medical system is bound to pose difficulties.
The UN estimates that about 65 percent of Gaza’s total road network has been damaged. Nineteen of the Strip’s 36 hospitals are out of service.
The north of the territory is cut off from the south and travel between the two zones has been difficult throughout the war due to Israeli military operations. Aid groups have had to suspend their trips for security reasons after convoys were attacked by the Israeli army.
Peeperkorn said Friday that WHO cannot conduct house-to-house vaccinations in Gaza, as it has done in other polio campaigns. Asked about the feasibility of the initiative, Peeperkorn said WHO believes it is feasible if all the pieces of the puzzle are in place.
How many doses do children need and what happens if they miss a dose?
WHO says children usually need three to four doses of oral polio vaccine (two drops per dose) to be protected against polio. If they do not receive all doses, they are vulnerable to infection.
Doctors have previously found that children who are malnourished or have other illnesses may need more than 10 doses of oral polio vaccine to be fully protected.
Yes, but they are very rare.
Billions of doses of the oral vaccine have been administered to children around the world and it is safe and effective. However, in about 1 in every 2.7 million doses, the live virus in the vaccine can paralyze the child receiving the drops.
The poliovirus that triggered this latest outbreak is a mutated virus from an oral polio vaccine. The oral polio vaccine contains weakened live virus, and in very rare cases, vaccinated people excrete that virus and it can evolve into a new form capable of starting new epidemics.
(Only the headline and image of this report may have been reworked by Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
First published: August 31, 2024 | 22:22 IS
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