The UN World Health Organization (WHO) announced on Wednesday that the mass polio vaccination campaign in Gaza which began successfully last year, will continue in the coming days.
The final phase of the polio vaccination campaign in war-ravaged northern Gaza has been postponed due to ongoing hostilities and lack of humanitarian access.
Explaining that two doses are needed for children to reach full immunity, UNICEF Communication Specialist, Rosalia Bollen, told UN News’s Khaled Mohamed on Monday that 120,000 children would be “at great risk” if they do not receive the second dose before mid-November.
Ms. Bollen described the many risks children are facing on a daily basis across Gaza.
Although the African Region was certified free of wild poliovirus one year ago, after four years without a case, outbreaks of a vaccine-derived poliovirus (cVDPV) is spreading throughout communities where too few children have received the polio vaccine, the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Thursday.
Five health workers carrying out a polio vaccination campaign in Afghanistan’s Nangarhar Province were killed on Tuesday, and four others injured, during a series of attacks condemned by a senior UN official on the ground as brutal and “senseless”.
