A campaign to vaccinate 640,000 children against polio in Gaza has so far been more successful than expected as families flock to seek treatment, the World Health Organization said on Tuesday.
Teams of health workers delivered the two-drop oral vaccine to 161,030 children in the first two days of the roughly 10-day operation, surpassing the organization’s target of 150,000 for the first phase of the campaign in central Gaza.
“It’s going well,” Rick Peppercorn, the organization’s representative for the Palestinian territories, told reporters via video link from Gaza on Tuesday, describing an “almost festive” atmosphere as families went to designated sites to vaccinate their children.
While Israeli airstrikes continued in other parts of Gaza, Israel agreed to a pause in fighting in certain areas to advance the vaccination campaign and “so far they work,” Dr. Peppercorn said.
Health teams will try next in southern Gaza, where the WHO estimates it needs to reach 340,000 children and inoculate about 150,000 more before moving north.
WHO and its partner agencies in Gaza say they need to reach 90 percent of children under 10 to stop the spread of polio. Gazans are experiencing an explosion of infectious diseases in overcrowded and unsanitary conditions created by the war and the destruction of Gaza’s health care infrastructure.
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