Security Council members urge polio vaccinations in Gaza
Published: Thursday, Aug 22nd 2024, 19:30
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UN officials are urging efforts to ramp up urgently needed polio vaccinations for hundreds of thousands of children in the Gaza Strip. "The decimated health system is completely unprepared to deal with this new polio crisis," warned Louisa Baxter, head of the emergency health unit at Save the Children, at a UN Security Council meeting in New York.
"If preventative measures are not taken immediately, the polio outbreak will not only be a disaster for the children in Gaza, but could set back global efforts to eradicate the disease significantly." There are already confirmed outbreaks, the disease is spreading and it will not stop at the borders of the Gaza Strip. Around 50,000 children have been born in the sealed-off coastal strip since the start of the war on October 7, 2023 and have generally not received the necessary vaccinations, said Baxter.
More than a dozen nations expressed their support for a ceasefire and vaccination campaign during the Security Council meeting. This should begin at the end of August. Palestinian UN Ambassador Riyad Mansour emphasized that there had been no cases of polio in the Gaza Strip for over 25 years, but that there was now a threat of a new standstill. "Gaza does not need more stagnation," he said.
640,000 children must be protected
Last week, UN Secretary-General António Guterres had already called for a pause in the fighting. "It is impossible to carry out a polio vaccination campaign while war is raging everywhere." At the end of August and in September, more than 640,000 children up to the age of ten are to be protected against the virus in two rounds of vaccination, the World Health Organization (WHO) announced in Geneva, releasing 1.6 million doses of vaccine.
The WHO and the UN Children's Fund, Unicef, called on Israel and the Islamist terrorist organization Hamas to stop fighting for seven days. Hamas supported this demand, according to a spokesperson for the organization. According to Guterres, 708 teams are to carry out the vaccinations in health facilities. A further 316 teams are to be deployed in the Gaza Strip.
©Keystone/SDA
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