AL ZAWAYDA: Ghadir Hajji rushed to a clinic on Sunday in hopes her five children would be among the first to get vaccinated against polio, which has re-emerged in war-ravaged Gaza.

“They absolutely have to be vaccinated,” she said as the family waited in line for a vaccine drive announced after health officials reported last month the first case of polio in the besieged territory in a quarter of a century.

“We received text messages from the ministry of health and we showed up right away.” She was joined by thousands of other Gazans whose fear of polio — which is highly contagious and potentially fatal — despite concerns for their personal security and rumours the vaccine would not be safe or effective.

Poliovirus is highly infectious and most often spread through sewage and contaminated water — an increasingly common problem in Gaza with much of the territory’s infrastructure destroyed by Israel. The disease mainly affects children under the age of five. It can cause deformities and paralysis, and is potentially fatal.

The besieged territory reported the first case of contagious disease after 25 years

At one clinic alone in Deir el-Balah nearly 2,000 children were vaccinated on Sunday, said Louise Wateridge, a spokeswoman for the United Nations agency for Pales­tinian refugees, known as UNRWA.

The agency had mobile teams going from tent to tent, marking kids’ thumbs with ink once they received their doses, Wateridge said. The first doses were administered on Saturday to an unspecified number of children in the southern city of Khan Yunis, ahead of Sunday’s large-scale rollout.

The campaign aims to vaccinate more than 640,000 children in the besieged Palestinian territory, devastated by almost 11 months of conflict.

‘Anxious’

The World Health Organisation (WHO) has delivered at least 1.26 million doses to Gaza already.

The health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza has identified 67 vaccination centres — mostly hospitals, smaller health centres and schools — in central Gaza, 59 in southern Gaza and 33 in northern Gaza to administer the doses. The second dose of the vaccine must be given four weeks after the first.

On Thursday, the WHO said that Israel had agreed to a series of three-day “humanitarian pauses” in northern, southern and central areas to facilitate vaccinations.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu however has insisted that these pauses were not amounting to any kind of ceasefire in overall fighting in Gaza.

“There are a lot of drones flying over central Gaza and we hope this vaccination campaign for children will be calm,” Yasser Shaaban, medical director of Al-Awda hospital in central Gaza, said on Sunday.

The humanitarian pause was meant to last from 6am until 2pm, according to a statement issued Saturday by COGAT, the Israeli defence ministry body which oversees civilian affairs in the Palestinian territories. Wateridge said she heard some gunfire in central Gaza after 6am, but after that the area remained calm.

“It’s very hard to go from living in absolute fear for every second of your waking and even sleeping day to then suddenly be assured, ‘Oh no it’s fine now,’” said the UNRWA spokeswoman.

“We’re also anxious to see what happens after 2pm. If the bombing continues after 2pm this is of course going to impact the vaccination campaign... The only way to do this is a ceasefire.”

The devastation of Gaza’s health sector exacerbated global alarm after the Ramallah-based Palesti­nian health ministry said in August that tests in Jordan had confirmed polio in an unvaccinated 10-month-old baby from central Gaza. Palestinian mother Basma al-Batsh said she was “very happy” the vaccination drive was underway.

“I want to protect my children because I was afraid that they would be affected and become disabled,” she said.

Published in Dawn, September 2nd, 2024