Gaza authorities say more than 72,600 children have been vaccinated against polio on the first day of the campaign

September 2 (EUROPA PRESS) –

Authorities in the Gaza Strip, controlled by the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas), have estimated that more than 72,600 Palestinian children have been vaccinated against polio on the first day of the inoculation campaign, launched after the first case of the disease in 25 years was detected in the enclave amid Israel’s military offensive.

The Gazan Ministry of Health said in a brief message posted on its Facebook account that “medical teams in the Central Governorate were able to vaccinate 72,611 children on the first day of the emergency polio vaccination campaign in Gaza.”

The campaign, which aims to vaccinate more than 640,000 children in the enclave against polio in twelve days with the distribution of 1.3 million doses in three phases, started on a large scale on Sunday, although on Saturday vaccines were administered to babies at Naser Hospital in the city of Khan Yunis (south).

Vaccinations will be carried out until September 4 in central Gaza, while the following day the campaign will move to the south of the enclave, where it will be active until September 9. The following four days are reserved to complete the initiative in Gaza City and the north of the Strip.

The campaign, led by the UN, was decided upon after the virus was found in sewage samples in the centre of the Gaza Strip in June, following months of an Israeli offensive, unleashed after the attacks carried out on 7 October by Hamas and other Palestinian groups. Since then, a baby has become the first person in Gaza to be diagnosed with polio in 25 years.

The parties have agreed to a series of humanitarian pauses to allow the work of medical teams, supported by international organisations. For this reason, the representative of the World Health Organisation (WHO) in the occupied Palestinian territories, Rik Peeperkorn, demanded that these pauses be respected and stressed that this will be a “complex” exercise.