The World Health Organization said Thursday it has reached an agreement with Israel for limited pauses in fighting in Gaza to allow for polio vaccinations for hundreds of thousands of children after a baby contracted the first confirmed case in 25 years in the Palestinian territory.
Described as “humanitarian pauses” that will last three days in different areas of the war-ravaged territory, the vaccination campaign will start Sunday in central Gaza, said Rik Peeperkorn, WHO’s representative in the Palestinian territories.
That will be followed by another three-day pause in southern Gaza and then another in northern Gaza, he said, noting that the pauses will last eight or nine hours each day.
He said he expects health workers might need additional days to complete the vaccinations. More than 2,000 health workers will take part, including UN agencies and the Gaza Health Ministry.
Peeperkorn told reporters via video conference that they aim to vaccinate 640,000 children under 10 and that the campaign has been coordinated with Israeli authorities.
“I’m not going to say this is the ideal way forward. But this is a workable way forward,” Peeperkorn said of the humanitarian pauses. Later he added, “It will happen and should happen because we have an agreement.”
These humanitarian pauses are not a cease fire between Israel and Hamas that mediators U.S., Egypt and Qatar have long been seeking, including in talks that are ongoing this week.
CBC News hears from the family of a baby with polio — Gaza’s first case in 25 years — while global health authorities rush to roll out a vaccination plan, hindered by Israeli bombings and displacement orders.
An Israeli official said there is expected to be some sort of tactical pause to allow vaccinations to take place. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because the plan has not been finalized. The Israeli army has previously announced limited pauses in some areas to allow international humanitarian operations.
WHO said health workers need to vaccinate at least 90 per cent of children in Gaza to stop the transmission of polio.
The campaign comes after 10-month-old Abdel-Rahman Abu El-Jedian was partially paralyzed by a mutated strain of the virus that vaccinated people shed in their waste. The baby boy was not vaccinated because he was born just before Oct. 7, when Hamas militants attacked Israel, which then launched a retaliatory offensive on Gaza.
He is one of hundreds of thousands of children who missed vaccinations because of the fighting between Israel and Hamas.
Separately, the Hostage Families Forum called on the WHO and UNICEF to ensure that the Israeli hostages being held captive in Gaza are vaccinated against polio.
The head of the forum’s health division, Prof. Hagai Levine, “formally urges WHO and UNICEF to include hostages in the ongoing polio vaccination campaign and all other health interventions,” according to a statement released by the forum.