The Israeli military and Palestinian militant group Hamas have agreed to three separate, zoned three-day pauses in fighting in the Gaza Strip to allow for the vaccination of some 640,000 children against polio, a senior WHO official said on Thursday.
The vaccination campaign is due to start on Sunday, said Rik Peeperkorn, the World Health Organisation’s senior official for the Palestinian territories. He said the agreement was for the pauses to take place between 6 a.m. and 3 p.m. (0300-1200 GMT)
He said the campaign would start in central Gaza with a three-day pause in fighting, then move to southern Gaza, where there would be another three-day pause, followed by northern Gaza. Peeperkorn added that there was an agreement to extend the humanitarian pause in each zone to a fourth day if needed.
The WHO confirmed on August 23 that at least one baby has been paralysed by the type 2 polio virus, the first such case in the territory in 25 years. The UN Security Council will meet later on Thursday on the humanitarian situation in Gaza.
“We are ready to cooperate with international organizations to secure this campaign, serving and protecting more than 650,000 Palestinian children in the Gaza Strip,” Hamas official Basem Naim told Reuters.
The Israeli military’s humanitarian unit (COGAT) said on Wednesday that the vaccination campaign would be conducted in coordination with the Israeli military “as part of the routine humanitarian pauses that will allow the population to reach the medical centers where the vaccinations will be administered.”