The Government of Gaza denounces that Israel “is trying to abort the polio vaccination campaign”

MADRID 28 Oct. (EUROPA PRESS) –

The Ministry of Health of the Government of the Gaza Strip, controlled by the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas), denounced this Monday that Israel is trying to “abort” the vaccination campaign against polio by preventing access to the north of the enclave.

“The Israeli occupation is trying to abort the polio vaccination campaign by all means, preventing the teams from reaching northern Gaza and creating obstacles to its implementation also in Gaza City,” the Ministry of Health denounced in a statement.

The Ministry warns that due to these obstacles “the campaign risks failure, which means that the polio epidemic will continue to exist, threatening not only Gaza, but also the entire surrounding area.”

Gazan health authorities are already working on “alternatives” to “overcome the obstacles that the occupation poses to the” vaccination campaign.

The vaccination campaign is in its final phase, which aims to vaccinate 119,279 children in northern Gaza in collaboration with the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), the United Nations Agency for Palestine Refugees in the East Next (UNRWA) and the World Health Organization (WHO).

In August, the WHO confirmed a case of polio in a ten-month-old baby in the center of the Palestinian enclave in the midst of the Israeli offensive, the first case of this type confirmed in the Gaza Strip for 25 years. Poliovirus was detected in environmental samples in Khan Yunis and Deir el-Balah.

To interrupt the transmission of the virus, it is necessary that at least 90 percent of children be vaccinated. Only in this way will the outbreak be controlled and its spread prevented.

Israel’s offensive against Gaza was launched after the attacks of October 7, 2023, which left some 1,200 dead and nearly 250 kidnapped, according to Israeli authorities. Since then, more than 43,000 Palestinians have died, as the Gazan authorities have indicated, in addition to more than 750 Palestinians killed at the hands of Israeli security forces and in attacks carried out by settlers in the West Bank and East Jerusalem since that date. .