The World Health Organization has announced it has “a preliminary commitment” from Israel and Hamas for humanitarian pauses in fighting in the Gaza Strip to allow for the vaccination of children against polio, with the first vaccinations to begin as early as Sunday.
The UN is preparing to vaccinate an estimated 640,000 children in Gaza, where the UN’s global health body confirmed on 23 August 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 WHO’s announcement follows earlier indications by Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, who had suggested there could be a part suspension of military operations in Gaza to allow young children to be vaccinated against the disease.
Rik Peeperkorn, the WHO’s senior official for the Palestinian territories, said the agreement was for three separate, zoned three-day pauses in fighting in Gaza to allow for a first round of vaccinations.
The vaccination campaign is due to start on Sunday, with the pauses scheduled to take place between 6am and 3pm, he said. The campaign would start in central Gaza, then move to southern Gaza, followed by northern Gaza.
Peeperkorn added there was an agreement to extend the pause in each zone to a fourth day if needed. “From our experience, we know an additional day or two is very often needed to achieve sufficient coverage,” Mike Ryan, WHO emergencies director, told the UN security council on Thursday during a meeting on the humanitarian situation in Gaza.
A second round of vaccination would be required four weeks after the first round, said Peeperkorn. “At least 90% of coverage is needed during each round of the campaign in order to stop the outbreak and prevent international spread of polio,” Ryan said.
In a statement, Netanyahu’s office denied an Israeli television report that there would be a general truce during the vaccination campaign, which begins at the weekend, but said it had approved the “designation of specific places” in Gaza.
“This has been presented to the security cabinet and has received the support of the relevant professionals,” the statement said.
The terse statement may well have been deliberately vague. Far-right elements of the coalition are adamantly opposed to any form of truce or relief for Gaza’s Palestinian population, but aid agencies have made it clear that the polio outbreak, the first in Gaza for 25 years, would almost certainly spread to Israel if not contained immediately.
The Israeli media report said that a pause in operations was demanded by the US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, when he visited Israel last week.
More than 25,000 vials of vaccine, enough for more than 1m doses, have arrived in Gaza along with the equipment needed to keep them cool while they are being transported. But health experts have warned that it would be virtually impossible to carry out the vaccination drive successfully under bombardment.
To stop the spread of the disease, aid agencies must reach 90% of the estimated 640,000 children under the age of 10 in Gaza. That is already challenging as Palestinians have been subjected to an increasing number of evacuation orders by the Israeli military, crowding them into ever tighter, more remote spaces.
One possibility suggested by Netanyahu’s statement is that Israeli bombardment would be stopped in different areas of Gaza sequentially, to allow aid workers with the vaccines to move from one area to another.
The uncertainty over humanitarian pauses and evacuation orders made planning extremely difficult, said Juliette Touma, a spokesperson for the UN relief agency Unrwa.
“Plans are the bread and butter of any successful humanitarian operation. You have got to know how many people you are going to reach: where are they located? How are you going to reach them?” Touma said. “Planning is such an important element of the success of any operation, but in Gaza planning is almost nonexistent.”
