161,000 children vaccinated against polio in Gaza in 2 days, says WHO

The World Health Organization (WHO) announced that 1,61,000 Palestinian children were vaccinated in two days as part of the polio vaccination campaign in Gaza, exceeding the estimated target of about 1,56,550 children.

Dr. Rick Peppercorn, WHO Representative in the Palestinian Territories, told reporters in Geneva via video conference on Tuesday that preliminary data shows that about 74,340 children were vaccinated on the second day of the campaign, while more than 86,600 children had been vaccinated on the first day.

The majority of the remaining children in central Gaza are scheduled to be vaccinated by the end of the first round, Pepper-Corn added, noting that multiple teams have been deployed to larger fixed sites, allowing some to operate as mobile teams to proactively reach children to ensure that no child is missed.

The WHO official confirmed that vaccination teams faced larger numbers of residents in Al-Maghazi, Al-Bureij and Al-Masdar, where two additional shipments of vaccines were sent to primary health care centres in Al-Maghazi and Al-Bureij due to high demand.

Dr. Pepper-Corn noted that the WHO considers that there is a high risk of poliovirus type 2 infection inside Gaza and internationally due to gaps in children's immunity due to disruptions in routine vaccination and the newborn category and the destruction of the health system there in addition to the ongoing displacement of the population, malnutrition and severely damaged water and sanitation systems.

Last Saturday, Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, President, directed the provision of USD 5 million to support the emergency vaccination campaign against polio in Gaza after the first case of the virus was recorded in the Strip. This is part of the ongoing efforts made by the UAE to provide relief to the brotherly Palestinian people, especially children, in response to the difficult humanitarian conditions they are going through.

The UAE announced earlier today that it had launched the campaign on Sunday in a strategic move to protect more than 6,40,000 children from the risk of polio, in cooperation with the World Health Organization, UNICEF, and UNRWA, in central Gaza, and that it would gradually move to the south and north of the Strip, where it aims to vaccinate 90 per cent of children to ensure their protection from the disease.