GAZA, (PIC)
The World Health Organization has announced that a limited “humanitarian pauses” will start on Sunday to allow for vital polio vaccinations in Gaza, but they will only happen in “certain places at certain times”.
WHO’s representative in the Palestinian territories Rik Peeperkorn said the UN health agency welcomes “a preliminary commitment for area-specific humanitarian pauses” in fighting to allow the polio vaccination campaign to start.
“We need these humanitarian pauses and that has been very clear. There’s an agreement on that, so we expect that all parties will stick to that. Otherwise, it is impossible to do a proper campaign,” he said.
The vaccination campaign will start Sunday in central Gaza, with a “humanitarian pause” lasting from 6 a.m. until 3 p.m. for three days that can be extended by an additional day if needed, Peeperkorn added.
The effort will then move to southern Gaza and finally northern Gaza for similar pauses, he told a UN press conference by video from Deir al-Balah in central Gaza.
“I’m not going to say this is the ideal way forward. But this is a workable way forward,” Peeperkorn said.
The vaccination campaign is targeting 640,000 children under 10, who will each receive two drops of oral polio vaccine in two rounds — the second to be given four weeks after the first.
Peeperkorn said the humanitarian pauses are critical so families can bring their children to get vaccinated and get back to where they are staying by 3 p.m.
For his part, WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said the pauses are set to begin on September 1, with teams on the ground needing the next 48 hours to ensure logistics are in place for the rollout of a vaccination campaign.
The Hamas Movement welcomed the announcement for a temporary pause to allow for the administration of polio vaccines.
“Hamas has welcomed the UN request for a humanitarian pause to implement the vaccination campaign,” Hamas Political Bureau member and spokesperson Basem Naim said in a statement on Thursday.
Naim affirmed that his Movement is “ready to cooperate with international organizations to secure this campaign” in line with the mission of “serving and protecting more than 650,000 Palestinian children in the Gaza Strip.”
