Despite fear of war, parents in Gaza quickly have their children vaccinated against polio

Ghadir Hajji rushed to a clinic on Sunday in the hope that her five children would be among the first to receive vaccinations against polio, which has resurfaced in war-torn Gaza.

“It is imperative that they be vaccinated,” she told AFP as the family stood in line for a vaccination drive announced after health officials reported the first case of polio in the besieged area in a quarter of a century last month.

“We received a text message from the Ministry of Health and are on site immediately.”

She was joined by tens of thousands of other Gaza residents whose desire to protect themselves from polio outweighed concerns for their personal safety and rumors that the vaccine was neither safe nor effective.

The Health Ministry of the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip said late Sunday that 72,611 children had been vaccinated so far.

Palestinian children wait for their polio vaccination in Deir Al-Balah, Gaza, on Sunday. Reuters

The poliovirus is highly contagious and is most commonly spread through sewage and contaminated water – an increasingly widespread problem in the Gaza Strip, where Israel has destroyed much of the infrastructure in its war against Hamas.

The disease mainly affects children under five years of age. It can cause deformities and paralysis and is potentially fatal.

In a clinic in Deir el-Balah alone, nearly 2,000 children were vaccinated on Sunday, said Louise Wateridge, a spokeswoman for the UN relief agency for Palestinian refugees UNRWA.

The agency had mobile teams go from tent to tent, marking children's thumbs with ink after they received their dose, Wateridge said.

The first doses were administered to an unspecified number of children in the southern city of Khan Yunis on Saturday, ahead of the large-scale rollout on Sunday.

The aim of the campaign is to vaccinate more than 640,000 children in the Gaza Strip.

'Fearful'

The World Health Organization (WHO) has already delivered at least 1.26 million doses to Gaza.

The Gaza Health Ministry has identified 67 vaccination centers – mainly hospitals, smaller health centers and schools – in central Gaza, 59 in southern Gaza and 33 in northern Gaza to administer the vaccine doses.

A second dose of vaccine must be administered four weeks after the first.

On Thursday, the WHO said Israel had agreed to a series of three-day “humanitarian pauses” in northern, southern and central areas to facilitate vaccinations.

However, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stressed that these pauses did not amount to any kind of ceasefire in the fighting in the Gaza Strip.

A Palestinian child is vaccinated against polio in Deir Al-Balah, Gaza, on Sunday. Reuters

“There are many drones flying over central Gaza and we hope that this vaccination campaign for children will be peaceful,” Yasser Shaaban, medical director of Al-Awda Hospital in central Gaza, said on Sunday.

The humanitarian pause was to last from 6 a.m. (3 a.m. CET) to 2 p.m., said a statement released on Saturday by COGAT, the Israeli Defense Ministry responsible for civil affairs in the Palestinian territories.

Wateridge said she heard gunshots in central Gaza after 6 a.m., but the area remained quiet after that.

“It is very hard when you live in absolute fear every second of the day and then suddenly you are told: 'Oh no, everything is OK now,'” said the UNRWA spokeswoman.

“We are also curious to see what happens after 2 p.m. If the bombing continues after 2 p.m., it will obviously have an impact on the vaccination campaign… The only way to achieve this is a ceasefire.”

The war in the Gaza Strip broke out after Hamas' attack on southern Israel on October 7, which killed 1,205 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP news agency count based on official Israeli figures.

According to the Gaza Strip Health Ministry, at least 40,738 people have been killed so far in Israel's military retaliation campaign.

According to the UN Human Rights Office, most of the dead are women and children.

A health worker administers the polio vaccine to a Palestinian child in Zawayda. AFP

The devastation of the Gaza health sector heightened global concern after the Palestinian Health Ministry in Ramallah announced in August that tests in Jordan had confirmed polio in an unvaccinated 10-month-old baby from central Gaza.

Palestinian mother Basma Al Batsh told the media on Sunday that she was “very happy” that the vaccination campaign was taking place.

“I want to protect my children because I was afraid they might be affected and become disabled,” she said.

France-Presse