Israel agrees to pauses in fighting for polio vaccine drive in Gaza

YEREVAN, AUGUST 30, ARMENPRESS. Israel has agreed to a series of “humanitarian pauses” in Gaza to allow for the vaccination of children against polio, the BBC reported citing a World Health Organization (WHO) official.

The campaign will aim to vaccinate around 640,000 children across the Gaza strip and will begin on Sunday, senior WHO official Rik Peeperkorn said.

It will be rolled out in three separate stages, across the central, southern and northern parts of the strip. During each stage, fighting will pause for three consecutive days between 06:00 and 15:00 local time.

The agreement comes days after UN officials said a 10-month-old baby had been partially paralysed after contracting Gaza’s first case of polio for 25 years.

Around 1.26m doses of the novel oral polio vaccine type 2 (nOPV2) are already in Gaza, with 400,000 additional doses set to arrive soon.

The vaccinations will be carried out by UN staff and other local health workers. Over 2,000 health and community outreach personnel have been trained to administer the vaccine.

Poliovirus is highly infectious and is most often spread through sewage and contaminated water.

It can cause disfigurement and paralysis, and is potentially fatal. It mainly affects children under the age of five.

The Israeli military said in July it had begun vaccinating its soldiers against the disease.

Hamas official Basem Naim told the Reuters news agency: "We are ready to cooperate with international organisations to secure this campaign, serving and protecting more than 650,000 Palestinian children in the Gaza Strip."

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the series of three-day pauses were "not a ceasefire".

Israel launched a military campaign in Gaza in response to an unprecedented attack on southern Israel on 7 October by Hamas, during which about 1,200 people were killed and 251 taken hostage.

More than 40,530 people have been killed in Gaza since 7 October, according to the territory's Hamas-run health ministry.