Dressed in her polio campaign vest, Dr. Tasneem Abu Al-Qambaz walks the streets of Deir al Balah, stopping parents and administering an oral vaccine to their kids, then marks each child with a black dot on their nail.
Polio immunization rollout began in central Gaza on Sunday after Israel and Hamas agreed to brief pauses in the war so children could be vaccinated.
International organizations, including the United Nations and the World Health Organization, will vaccinate 640,000 children under the age of 10 after an 11-month-old baby was confirmed to have contracted the virus. The WHO confirmed Abdel Rahman Abu Al-Jidyan’s left leg became paralyzed from polio. His case is the first in Gaza in 25 years.
“The polio virus is very important because the virus is very aggressive and leads to paralysis, which is irreversible,” Abu Al-Qambaz told CBC freelance videographer Mohamed El Saife.
“So this is the urgency for doing the vaccinations.”
The campaign began in central Gaza and will move to other areas in the coming days. It will also move to the southern tip of the Gaza Strip before heading north for a final leg.
Fighting will pause for at least eight hours on three consecutive days. The WHO said it will likely need to extend the campaign to a fourth day.
Vaccinated children will also need a booster in a month to ensure the immunization campaign’s success.
Dr. Hamid Jafari, director of polio eradication at the WHO told CBC News that international organizations are already planning or the booster campaign in four weeks.
“When we do that second round, there will be great turnout of families. Health-care workers will be more confident,” he said.
“We may be able to add on other essential humanitarian services and items like hygiene care, nutritional supplements and things like that on the corridor that has been established for polio vaccination.”
While mobile teams continued to walk the streets of Deir al Balah, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine (UNRWA) held a clinic at one of their facilities in central Gaza.
One parent at the clinic was Omar Abu Sayedou, 33, who brought his three daughters for the vaccine.
“Thank God this vaccine arrived in the Gaza Strip, given the circumstances that we’re in,” he told El Saife.
At the Yaffa Hospital in Deir al Balah, hundreds of parents crowd the hospital courtyard, children in tow. As they moved toward the table where health-care workers are administering the vaccine, there was an ease in the air because the sound of bombs and drones was missing.
Parents who reach the table lay their children down. A health official administers then the dose of the vaccine in their mouths.
At another entrance of the hospital, white cars pull up with more boxes of the polio vaccine.
In July, Type 2 poliovirus was detected in six wastewater samples in Khan Younis and Deir al Balah through tests run by international organizations and Israel.
The Gaza Health Ministry declared a polio epidemic and said it was caused by the “miserable conditions” people in Gaza are living in.
Thousands of children vaccinated so far
UNRWA spokesperson Louise Wateridge told El Saife that thousands of children had already received the immunization.
“We must continue the momentum,” she said.
Wateridge says planning for this rollout in a war zone was not an easy task as humanitarian pauses were negotiated with international organizations.
She stressed the importance of a ceasefire as a means to stop the definitive spread of polio.
“There’s a huge risk of this disease spreading in the Gaza Strip and also in the region,” she said.
“While we’re very hopeful that these humanitarian pauses will last, we really need a ceasefire.”
Jafari said that he is hopeful that the humanitarian pauses will be respected so families and health-care workers can have confidence that the rollout can “proceed in a safe environment.”
“The families have put a trust, as have the health workers, in this humanitarian pause.”