A Palestinian child is vaccinated against polio, amid the Israel-Hamas conflict, at the Nasser hospital in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip, on August 31, 2024 | Photo credit: Reuters
The UN health agency and its partners are launching a campaign starting Sunday, September 1, 2024, to vaccinate 6,40,000 Palestinian children in Gaza against polio, an ambitious effort amid a war that has devastated the region’s health system.
The campaign comes after the first case of polio was reported in Gaza in 25 years – a 10-month-old boy, now paralyzed in his legs. The World Health Organization (WHO) says the paralysis case suggests there are hundreds of others infected but not showing symptoms.
Most people with polio do not develop symptoms, and those who do usually recover within a week or so. But 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.
Vaccination efforts will not be easy: Gaza’s roads are largely destroyed, hospitals are badly damaged and the population is scattered into isolated pockets.
The WHO said on Thursday that it had reached an agreement with Israel for a limited pause in the fighting to allow the vaccination campaign to take place. Even so, such a large-scale campaign will cause great difficulties in the area covered in rubble, where 90% of Palestinians have been displaced.
A three-day vaccination campaign in central Gaza will begin on Sunday, during a “humanitarian pause” from 6am to 3pm, and another day could be extended if necessary, said Rik Peeperkorn, WHO representative in the Palestinian territories.
In coordination with the Israeli authorities, the effort will move to southern Gaza and northern Gaza during the same pause, he said during a videotaped news conference from Deir al-Balah in central Gaza.
The vaccination campaign targets 640,000 children under the age of 10, according to the WHO. Each child will receive two drops of oral polio vaccine in two rounds, the second of which will be given four weeks after the first.
Vaccination sites span Gaza, both inside and outside Israel’s evacuation zone, from Rafah in the south to the north of the area.
The Ministry of Health in Ramallah said on August 30 that there will be more than 400 “fixed” vaccination sites – most of them in Khan Younis, where the population density is the highest and where there are 239,300 children under 10. The fixed sites include health centers, hospitals, clinics and field hospitals.
Elsewhere in the region, there will also be around 230 “outreach” sites – community gathering points that are not traditional medical centers – where the vaccine will be distributed.
1.3 million doses in cold chain storage
About 1.3 million doses of the vaccine passed through the Kerem Shalom checkpoint and are currently being held in “cold chain storage” at a warehouse in Deir al-Balah. This means that the warehouse can maintain the correct temperature so that the vaccine does not lose its potency.
Another shipment of 400,000 doses is set to be sent to Gaza soon.
The vaccine will be transported to distribution sites by a team of more than 2,000 medical volunteers, said Ammar Ammar, a UNICEF spokesperson.
Running any campaign that requires crossing the Gaza Strip and interacting with the medical system is bound to cause difficulties.
The UN estimates that approximately 65% ​​of the total road network in Gaza has been damaged. Nineteen of the Strip’s 36 hospitals were without service.
The north of the area is cut off from the south, and travel between the two areas has been a challenge during the war due to Israeli military operations. Aid groups had to postpone their journey due to security concerns, after a convoy was targeted by the Israeli military.
Peeperkorn said on Friday that the WHO could not carry out household vaccinations in Gaza, as it has done in other polio campaigns. When asked about the viability of the effort, Peeperkorn said the WHO thinks “it can be done if all the pieces of the puzzle are in place.”
The World Health Organization says children usually need about three to four doses of oral polio vaccine — two drops per dose — to be protected against polio. If they do not receive the full dose, they are vulnerable to infection.
Doctors previously found that children who were malnourished or had other illnesses needed more than 10 doses of the oral polio vaccine to be fully protected.
Billions of doses of oral vaccines have been given to children worldwide and are safe and effective. But in about 1 in 2.7 million doses, the live virus in the vaccine can paralyze a child who receives the drops.
The polio virus causing this latest outbreak is a mutated virus from the oral polio vaccine. The oral polio vaccine contains weakened live virus and in very rare cases, the virus is transmitted by the vaccinated person and can evolve into a new form that can start a new epidemic.
