Israel has agreed to limited daily pauses in fighting in the Gaza Strip to allow for a polio vaccination campaign, the United Nations said on Thursday.
According to Rip Peeperkorn, a representative of the World Health Organization (WHO), fighting in three areas of Palestinian territory will stop from morning to afternoon for three consecutive days, citing a commitment by the Israeli authority responsible for Palestinian affairs, COGAT.
Peeperkorn said the polio vaccination campaign would start on September 1 in central Gaza and would be carried out in southern and northern Gaza over the following two days.
The daily interruptions in the race to vaccinate more than 600,000 children would start at 6am and end between 2pm and 3pm, he added.
After poliovirus was discovered in Gaza’s wastewater, vaccines against the disease were brought to the coastal region, currently under siege by Israel, last week.
The United Nations wants to vaccinate more than 600,000 children in the Gaza Strip against the virus in two rounds of vaccinations.
To allow the doses to be administered, UN officials had called for a temporary ceasefire in the war in Gaza, which began nearly 11 months ago.
Since the start of the war sparked by Hamas’s attack on Israel on October 7, many babies in the Gaza Strip have not been vaccinated.
The appalling sanitary conditions in the coastal strip, where many displaced people have to survive in very small spaces and clean water is scarce, could contribute to the rapid spread of the disease.
