The Polio vaccination campaign in Gaza is a critical effort to protect thousands of children from a potential outbreak amidst the ongoing conflict.
UN agencies and local health officials in Gaza are starting a big campaign to vaccinate 640,000 kids against polio. To make this happen, they need to pause the fighting between Israeli forces and Hamas fighters. The first break in fighting is planned for Sunday. The World Health Organization (WHO) says they need to vaccinate at least 90% of kids under 10 quickly to stop the virus from spreading. This all started after Gaza found its first polio case in 25 years, and experts worry more kids might get sick, leading to a bigger outbreak.
One-year-old Abdulrahman Abu Judyan, who was crawling a few months ago, is now partly paralyzed in one leg due to polio. His mom, Niveen, who lives in a crowded tent camp, is worried he might never walk. “It was very shocking” she said. Abdulrahman missed his vaccinations because of the ongoing war, and now he’s suffering the consequences. The family has had to move five times during the conflict, making it hard for Abdulrahman to get medical care. Most kids in Gaza haven’t gotten their regular vaccines because of the war, which puts them at risk.
Niveen feels guilty that Abdulrahman didn’t get his vaccination, but she couldn’t do anything about it because of their situation. She hopes her son can get treatment outside Gaza so he can walk like other kids. But life is tough; she struggles to find clean water for her nine children, and the tent they live in is near raw sewage, making it easy for diseases like polio to spread.
Since the virus was found in wastewater samples in June, UN agencies have been rushing to start a mass vaccination campaign. UNICEF recently brought in 1.3 million vaccine doses, which they’re keeping in cold storage to make sure they work. Another 400,000 doses are on the way. The WHO has worked out a deal with Israel to pause the fighting so they can start vaccinating kids, starting in central Gaza and then moving to the south and north. These “humanitarian pauses” will last from 6:00 AM to 3:00 PM for three days, with a possible extra day if needed.
UNICEF’s Jonathan Crickx says these truces are super important because you can’t run a vaccination campaign in the middle of a war. Families need to feel safe bringing their kids to get vaccinated, and healthcare workers need to be able to reach them safely. This is a huge job, especially in Gaza where roads are damaged and security is a daily concern.
Over 2,000 workers, mostly locals, are helping with the vaccination effort. There will be more than 400 fixed vaccination sites, including healthcare centers, hospitals, clinics, and field hospitals. They’ll also have around 230 outreach sites in community gathering places to give out the vaccines. Each child needs two drops of the oral polio vaccine, with a second dose given four weeks after the first. It’s crucial to do this quickly to stop the virus from mutating and spreading further.
The polio variant causing this outbreak is a mutated version of the virus from an oral polio vaccine. The vaccine contains a weakened live virus, which in rare cases can be shed by vaccinated individuals and mutate into a form that can cause new outbreaks.
Doctors in Gaza are on high alert for more polio cases in kids, and tests are being done at a WHO-approved lab in Jordan. Dr. Hamid Jafari, WHO director of polio eradication for the eastern Mediterranean, says the situation is serious and could lead to more kids being paralyzed. The risk isn’t just in Gaza; it could spread to Israel, the West Bank, and nearby countries.
For now, the focus is on Gaza, where nearly half of the 2.3 million people are children. The past year has taken away so much from these kids from their loved ones, their homes, and their health. With no end in sight to the war, the hope is to at least get rid of one source of suffering.
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