UN chief calls for humanitarian pause in Gaza to vaccinate children against polio

Gaza's Health Ministry declared a polio epidemic in the Palestinian enclave last month, blaming Israel's ongoing military offensive

Palestinian children wait to evacuate a school that had been their shelter in eastern Deir Al Balah, where polio has been found in sewage. AP

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UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres on Friday called for the warring parties in Gaza to guarantee humanitarian pauses in the fighting so a polio vaccine campaign can be conducted.

“Let’s be clear: the ultimate vaccine for polio is peace and an immediate humanitarian ceasefire,” Mr Guterres told reporters at UN headquarters in New York.

“But in any case, a polio pause is a must. It is impossible to conduct a polio vaccination campaign with war raging all over.”

He appealed for “concrete assurances” to be provided quickly, warning that preventing and containing the spread of polio in the enclave would take an urgent, massive and co-ordinated effort.

Mr Guterres gave no timetable on when a pause would start and how long it would last.

The UN is set to launch a vaccine campaign in Gaza for children under the age of 10, but the “challenges are grave”, Mr Guterres added.

Last week, the World Health Organisation set out plans to administer 1.6 million polio vaccine doses in Gaza to prevent an outbreak that could exacerbate the current humanitarian crisis.

Two rounds of mass vaccination – aimed at hundreds of thousands of children – will begin this month after the detection of poliovirus in sewage in southern Khan Younis and central Deir Al Balah.

Gaza's Health Ministry declared a polio epidemic in the Palestinian enclave last month, blaming Israel's military offensive.

At least 95 per cent vaccination coverage will be needed during each of the two rounds of the campaign to prevent polio's spread and reduce its emergence given the devastation in Gaza, Mr Guterres said.

He added that a successful campaign will require the transport for vaccines and refrigeration equipment at every step, the entry of polio experts into Gaza, reliable internet and phone services, and other elements.

“And, above all, a successful polio vaccination campaign needs safety” for health workers, for children and their families to get to vaccination sites and for those facilities to be protected from bombings, Mr Guterres added.

A senior western official, told Reuters there was at least one confirmed case and two suspected among Palestinians in the enclave, adding that there might not be a single humanitarian pause but several shorter ones.

The danger is that the threat of disease outbreaks is not confined to Gaza, which the official said was a “contagion time bomb”, as when the rainy season begins in late autumn, the contaminated raw sewage could be “pushed” down to an aquifer from which Israel, Egypt and Jordan draw water.

Poliomyelitis, which is spread mainly through the faecal-oral route, is a highly infectious virus that can invade the nervous system and cause paralysis.

Children under five are most at risk from the viral disease, especially infants under two since normal vaccination campaigns have been disrupted by 10 months of conflict.