Gaza vaccination campaign begins 24 hours ahead of schedule to help children in Khan Yunis

Several babies at Nasser Hospital receive their first dose of polio as they await the large-scale start of the initiative on Sunday

Aug. 31 (EUROPA PRESS) –

The polio vaccination campaign in the Gaza Strip began this Saturday in the town of Khan Yunis with the administration of the first doses to babies at the Nasser hospital, at the start of a procedure that will actually formally begin early this coming Sunday morning with the mass inoculation of the vaccines to the population of the enclave.

Both the British broadcaster BBC and the Turkish agency Anatolia have confirmed that some of the babies in the hospital have already received the long-awaited doses, the prelude to a major initiative aimed at 640,000 children in the enclave, 90 percent of the child population, which will continue until September 12. The pan-Arab channel Al Jazeera speaks of around twelve inoculations.

The head of the campaign’s technical committee, Majdi Duhair, explained that the campaign will actually begin at 7:30 a.m. this coming Sunday, September 1, in the center of Gaza, and will return to Khan Yunis, in the south of the enclave, from September 5 to 9. The last four days, from September 9 to 12, are reserved for completing the initiative in Gaza City and the north of the Strip.

In this regard, the World Health Organization (WHO) announced last Thursday that Israel had agreed to a series of “limited” three-day “humanitarian pauses” in each of these three sectors to facilitate vaccinations.

The UN campaign comes after the virus was found in sewage samples in the Gaza Strip in June, following months of Israeli bombing of the enclave as part of the war against Hamas. Since then, a baby has become the first person in Gaza to be diagnosed with polio in 25 years.