Unicef director upbeat on progress after Gaza vaccinations begin

Senior UN children's agency official said Israel's pause in fighting must be held until the end

The first day of a massive vaccination campaign ended without disruption by Israeli bombardment. AP

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Gazans are eager to ensure their children are vaccinated as a large-scale campaign against polio looks set to continue into a second day, a top UN official told The National, in hope of preventing a full-scale outbreak in the besieged Gaza Strip.

Israel agreed on Thursday to pause its bombardment of certain areas of Gaza for eight hours a day to allow for more than 2,700 health care workers to attempt to immunise around 640,000 Gazan children under the age of 10 after the strip reported its first case of polio for 25 years.

Regional director of Unicef's Middle East and North Africa office, Adele Khodr, said the first day of the vaccination campaign, which started in central Gaza and will move both north and south next week, went well.

“If we can have the same level of humanitarian pause tomorrow [Monday] and maintain that pause, and we are very optimistic that, yes, it can go on. All that we are asking for is five days,” she told The National in an exclusive interview. "This is not too much for children, right? So we hope that it will continue tomorrow and it will hold on."

The oral inoculations will be offered at 160 sites, including schools, hospitals and medical centres.

Glimpse of hope for Gazans

Gazans are enthusiastic to get their children vaccinated, after routine immunisations were disrupted by Israel's war with Hamas, which has been raging since October. More than 40,700 Gazans have been killed in the conflict, triggered by a Hamas attack on southern Israel in which the group killed 1,200 people and kidnapped 251.

The first polio case declared was a 10-month-old baby, who lost the use of one of his legs after contracting the disease. People with polio often experience no symptoms, but for those who are hit hardest it can paralyse. There is no cure.

"The communities are really worried about the health of their children... they cannot protect them from many other things, but at least they want to protect them from polio," Ms Khodr said.

She said the take-up of vaccines also showed hope for the future after living under Israeli bombardment for 11 months.

"It really is a symbol of how much the community is looking forward to a normal life for their children," Ms Khodr said.

Israel allowed around 1.3 million doses to be brought into the territory last month, which are now being held in refrigerated storage in a warehouse in Deir Al Balah. Another shipment of 400,000 doses is set to be delivered to Gaza soon.

The polio virus that sparked 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 that virus is shed by those who are vaccinated and can evolve into a new form capable of starting new epidemics.

Unicef, along with the World Health Organisation and the UN's Palestinian Refugee agency, UNRWA, have a five-day window of opportunity to complete the first round of vaccinations.

"For us if this is missed, then this is the biggest challenge, and it will be a failure of the campaign," she said.

But once on the ground, other problems may arise for medical teams, from continuing fighting to devastated roads and hospitals shut down by the war. Around 90 per cent of Gaza's population of 2.3 million people have been displaced within the besieged territory, with hundreds of thousands crammed into squalid tent camps.

But Mr Khodr said she is hopeful medical teams would be able to reach all the children they needed to.

"I am sure that they are ready and able to overcome any logistic difficulties, as long as the team feels they are safe and that they will not be bombed, and that they will be able to have access, but they will find a way of reaching the communities," she said.

"The most important element to us is the pause in fighting, this has to be respected."

Israel did not appear to have struck any areas under the humanitarian pause on Sunday, but did launch an attack on what it said was a "command and control centre" inside a former school in Gaza city, Israel's military said. Palestinian medics said they had so far recovered four dead from the strike and that many others were wounded. In Khan Younis, an Israeli air strike killed two Palestinians and wounded 10 others, according to medics.