The Ministry of Health in the Gaza Strip announced, on Sunday evening, the arrival of 1,260,000 doses of polio vaccine to the Strip.
The ministry said in a statement: “One million and 260 thousand doses of the OPV2 vaccine against polio have arrived, in addition to 500 vaccine cases,” adding: “Preparations are underway to launch the campaign in coordination with partners.”
The ministry, which had previously called for a ceasefire in the Strip to enable it to vaccinate children, has not announced a date for the start of the vaccination campaign.
On Friday, the Director-General of the World Health Organization, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, expressed his deep concern over the confirmation of a 10-month-old child being infected with polio in the city of Deir al-Balah in the central Gaza Strip.
He added that WHO and its partners immediately began working to collect and transport stool samples from the child, to be tested in a WHO-accredited laboratory in the region. He explained that the child, who is paralyzed in his lower left leg, is in stable condition, and that given the high risk of contracting the disease in and around Gaza, the Palestinian Ministry of Health, WHO and the United Nations have decided to implement a two-phase vaccination campaign to stop the transmission of the virus.
He also pointed out that thousands of people are still forcibly displaced in the Khan Younis and Deir al-Balah areas due to repeated evacuation orders issued by Israel, and thus there is a risk of polio infection.
On August 16, the Palestinian Ministry of Health announced the first confirmed case of polio in the Gaza Strip, in the city of Deir al-Balah, in a 10-month-old child who had not received any polio vaccination dose.
The disease primarily affects children under the age of five, while one in 200 cases of infection with the disease leads to incurable paralysis, and between 5% and 10% of those infected with paralysis die because their respiratory muscles stop functioning, according to the World Health Organization.
The United Nations says on its website that as long as there is one child infected with poliovirus, children in all countries are at risk of contracting the disease.
With American support, Israel has been waging a devastating war on Gaza since October 7, 2023, leaving more than 133,000 dead and wounded, most of them children and women, and more than 10,000 missing, amid massive destruction and deadly famine.
In contempt of the international community, Israel continues the war, ignoring the UN Security Council resolution calling for an immediate halt, and the International Court of Justice’s orders to take measures to prevent acts of genocide and to improve the catastrophic humanitarian situation in Gaza.