The anti-polio campaign in Gaza is going "well" in the territory ravaged by nearly 11 months of war, with this first phase of vaccination still requiring at least ten days, the WHO said on Tuesday.
Two phases of a polio vaccination campaign are planned in the Gaza Strip to prevent the spread of circulating vaccine-derived poliovirus type 2 (cVDPV2), reaching 640,000 children during a series of "humanitarian pauses."
The second phase is scheduled "in four weeks," Dr. Rik Peeperkorn, the World Health Organization's representative in the occupied Palestinian territories, told a news briefing.
"So far, it's going well," Dr. Peeperkorn said, via video link from the Gaza Strip, but "there are still 10 days, at least 10 days" left for this first phase.
He explained that polio vaccination is usually done through door-to-door campaigns, something that is impossible in Gaza "because there are very few houses left and people are everywhere."
The vaccine is administered in health centers or by mobile teams.
The campaign has so far been confined to the centre of the narrow Palestinian territory.
So far, 161,000 children under ten have been reached, "exceeding the estimated target of 156,500 children" for this area, according to the WHO.
"We probably underestimated the population in this area," said Dr Peeperkorn. The goal is to vaccinate 340,000 children in the southern zone and another 150,000 in the northern zone.
He also explained that it had been decided that the campaign, which gives health workers the opportunity to see tens of thousands of children in Gaza, would focus only on polio vaccinations because time was running out.
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But the UN official recalled that the WHO remained "extremely concerned" by the health situation in Gaza, where there is a "huge increase in infectious diseases" and where only 16 of the 36 hospitals are operational.
The war between Israel and the Gaza Strip was triggered in response to an attack by the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas in Israel on October 7. The attack killed 1,205 people on the Israeli side, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official data.
In response, Israel launched a major air and land offensive in Gaza that has so far killed at least 40,786 people, according to Hamas' health ministry. The majority are women and minors, according to the UN.
The offensive caused a humanitarian and health disaster and the displacement, often multiple times, of almost all of the territory's 2.4 million inhabitants.
Polio, eradicated 25 years ago, has returned to the Gaza Strip where the virus was discovered in mid-August in a 10-month-old baby.
Dr Rik Peeperkorn praised the smooth running of the vaccination campaign: "There were so many people - fathers, mothers - who brought their children" who were "really proud and happy to have been vaccinated".
But that's no surprise, he said, explaining that in Gaza, as in the West Bank, there was before the war "a very high rate of acceptance of routine vaccination, with coverage rates ranging from 90 to 95%, a level higher than in many high-income countries."
At least 90% of Gazan children must receive both doses to "stop transmission within Gaza and prevent polio from spreading to neighboring countries" and internationally, the WHO official stressed.
Since 2014, polio has been considered by the WHO as a public health emergency of international concern, its maximum alert.
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