Israel reminds that there will be no ceasefire: it will only declare specific corridors for the distribution of doses and “safe zones” for vaccination
September 1 (EUROPA PRESS) –
Humanitarian organisations are launching a massive campaign in Gaza on Sunday to vaccinate more than 640,000 children in the enclave against polio in 12 days, distributing 1.3 million doses in three phases in the midst of a war.
Although the initiative actually began this past Saturday with the administration of a dozen vaccines to babies at the Nasser hospital in the Gazan city of Khan Yunis, in the south of the enclave, it will not be this Sunday when the large-scale deployment of supplies will begin.
“The children of Gaza,” said World Health Organization Secretary-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, “have today begun receiving much-needed vaccines, but ultimately the best vaccine for these children is peace.”
The campaign will first run until September 4 in central Gaza. From September 5, it will return to Khan Yunis and the rest of the southern areas of the enclave, until September 9. The last four days of September are reserved for completing 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 wastewater samples from 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.
The Islamist Hamas movement, which controls the institutions of the enclave, has directly blamed the Israeli offensive for “fostering the conditions” for the emergence of polio by deliberately destroying Gaza’s health infrastructure. Israel, on the other hand, accuses Hamas of being directly responsible for this health crisis by taking refuge in medical centres and vital points for the population of the enclave.
Faced with the possibility that this campaign might lead to a reduction in hostilities, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been blunt in declaring that “any information about a ceasefire to distribute vaccines is false.”
Instead, “Israel will only allow the opening of a humanitarian corridor for transport agents and will establish safe zones for the distribution of vaccines for a few hours.”
The Prime Minister nevertheless praised the campaign as an “important measure to prevent the outbreak of polio in Gaza, with the aim of also preventing its spread throughout the entire region” or, in other words, preventing it from reaching Israel.
MSF WARNS OF DIFFICULTIES IN THE PROCESS
Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) will be involved in this campaign in the five health centres it has in the southern part of the enclave. Each of them aims to vaccinate between 5,000 and 6,000 children in a context of enormous security difficulties, explains Ramiro García Cantugal, MSF medical coordinator in Gaza.
García Cantugal hopes that between 1,000 and 1,200 people will receive the vaccine every day, provided that Israel and Hamas comply with their security guarantees, otherwise there would be a very high risk of a catastrophe.
“In the end, once these humanitarian pauses by Israel are over and the vaccination campaign is over, we will return to a context of war in which there are military activities and in which there are bombings every day,” he lamented.
The aid worker also mentions that another difficulty of this campaign is the lack of electricity supply for the refrigerators that keep the vaccines at the low temperatures they need. However, “UNICEF, together with the WHO, are ensuring that there are sufficient generators to maintain the cold chain that the vaccination campaign needs,” he added.
The aim of the vaccination campaign is to reach 95% of children under 10 years of age throughout Gaza, the humanitarian worker recalls, and “if that percentage is not reached, the risk of an epidemic would still be there and more rounds of vaccination would be needed.”
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