Thousands of Children in Gaza Get 2nd Dose of Polio Vaccine

Jerusalem: Nearly 94,000 children in Gaza City received a second dose of polio vaccine this weekend in an effort that was delayed by intense Israeli bombardment and mass evacuation orders in the northern Gaza Strip, the Gaza Health Ministry said.

The second phase of the vaccination campaign was originally set to begin Oct. 23 across the north of the territory, but it was postponed because of a lack of assurances about pauses in the fighting and bombardment to ensure the safety of health workers, the World Health Organization and UNICEF said in a statement Friday.

The first round of vaccinations in September covered all of northern Gaza. Since then, the Israeli military has launched an intense offensive in the area against what it has said is a resurgence of Hamas.

A humanitarian pause for the second and final phase of the vaccination campaign was only assured for Gaza City, according to the U.N. agencies. They said around 15,000 children younger than 10 in northern towns where the Israeli military has been carrying out the offensive over the last few weeks "remain inaccessible and will be missed during the campaign, compromising its effectiveness."

The Gaza Health Ministry said that as of Saturday, 437,774 children younger than 10 had received the second dose of the vaccine across the whole Gaza Strip. The campaign is scheduled to continue through Monday.

Aid agencies sought to start a vaccination campaign in Gaza after traces of poliovirus were found in local wastewater in July, and a 10-month-old boy was confirmed in August to be the first resident of Gaza to be paralyzed by poliovirus in 25 years.

In September, temporary pauses in the war agreed to by Israel and Hamas allowed aid workers to immunize about 640,000 children younger than 10 who were at risk of the disease. The campaign began in central Gaza, then moved to the south and ended in the northern area.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.