A health worker administering polio vaccine to a Palestinian child in Zawayda, central Gaza Strip, Sept. 1, 2024. (Credit: Eyad Baba/AFP)
Benefiting from “humanitarian pauses” in the midst of the war in Gaza, the polio vaccination campaign was officially launched on Sunday in the Palestinian enclave, the first vaccinations having been administered the day before at the Nasser hospital in Khan Younis.
Operated by various U.N. agencies and NGOs, the campaign aims to vaccinate more than 640,000 children under the age of ten, and will take place in three phases. The international community had sounded the alarm after a 10-month-old baby was diagnosed in mid-August with this disease, which was eradicated 25 years ago.
Tamara Alrifai, Director of External Relations and Communications at the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA), answers questions from L'Orient-Le Jour.
How will the vaccination campaign work in Gaza?
The first phase of the poliovirus vaccination campaign is being carried out jointly by the World Health Organization (WHO), UNICEF, UNRWA and the Palestinian Ministry of Health to stop the spread of this disease.
This will take place between Sept. 1 and 11: Vaccination teams will move from the central areas, where vaccination began this Sunday. After three days, it will move south to Khan Younis and Rafah, finishing in Gaza City and the North. In addition to the health centers where we are administering the doses, we have around 500 medical teams who are visiting the shelters where the displaced people are staying, going from tent to tent.
In the first phase, which began today, we aim to cover 150,000 children. We are therefore using the vaccines that have already arrived in the enclave, i.e. 1.2 million doses.
What obstacles are our teams facing in the field?
This campaign is facing many obstacles: Because of the damage to our infrastructure and the repeated mass displacements, we can only use ten of our 27 health centers. It is taking place while the war is still raging. UNRWA has been calling for a humanitarian cease-fire since the first week of the conflict. These “polio breaks” are positive, but what we really need is a cease-fire.
Polio vaccines have to stay in the cold chain, which means they have to be stored in a constantly refrigerated place, so we need fuel to run the power plants to activate the cooling systems in the vaccine storage spaces. We also need fuel to move the health teams around the Gaza Strip.
What are the long-term limits of this anti-polio campaign?
It's very important to reflect on the reasons for this first case of polio in 25 years in Gaza. Generally speaking, all vaccinations are interrupted during a conflict. In almost 11 months of conflict, vaccine administration has fallen sharply, whereas the vaccination rate was over 90 percent before the war.
Obstacles to the delivery of aid and medicines, attacks on UNRWA health centers and infrastructure and the constant displacement of inhabitants make it extremely difficult to reach the population in Gaza. We must remember that 1.9 million people, i.e. nine out of 10 Gazans, have been repeatedly displaced.
Living conditions in Gaza are also a direct cause of polio and other infectious diseases. Children suffer from skin diseases, rashes, scabies and diarrhea. Families live in makeshift shelters, right in the middle of sewage spilling into the streets, garbage piling up, the equivalent of an estimated 200 soccer pitches. Inhabitants are crammed into 15 percent of the enclave, having been ordered to move by Israeli forces.
A cease-fire is essential not only to halt the spread of disease, but also to flood the enclave with humanitarian aid, medical equipment, fuel... All of this is necessary for the daily life of Gaza's inhabitants, and for this vaccination campaign in particular.
This article was originally published in L'Orient-Le Jour.
