WHO: Gaza Children Need Peace More than Vaccines

By Staff, Agencies

The UN World Health Organization (WHO) has stressed that “peace” is the best solution to save Palestinian children in the Gaza Strip, as a polio vaccination campaign is underway in the war-torn territory amid daily eight-hour pauses in "Israeli" strikes.

“Children in Gaza are receiving much-needed polio vaccines today. Ultimately, the best vaccine for these children is peace,” WHO Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said in a post on social media platform X on Sunday.

His remarks came as the vaccination campaign began after "Israel" agreed to eight-hour pauses in its strikes on designated sites in Gaza to allow health workers to vaccinate hundreds of thousands of Palestinian children against polio.

According to Rik Peeperkorn, WHO’s representative in the Palestinian territories, the so-called “humanitarian pauses” began on Sunday in central Gaza and would last for three days.

That will be followed by another similar pause in southern Gaza and then another in northern Gaza.

The campaign aims to vaccinate 640,000 children under 10, Peeperkorn told reporters via video conference on Thursday.

Thursday’s announcement came after a 10-month-old baby was partially paralyzed by a mutated strain of the virus that vaccinated people shed in their waste.

Abdel-Rahman Abu El-Jedian, who was born just before "Israel’s" war on Gaza erupted on October 7, was one of hundreds of thousands of children who missed vaccinations because of the war.

On Monday, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees said 87,000 Gazan children had received the first dose of a polio vaccine as the inoculation drive continues for the second day.

According to WHO, at least 90% of children in Gaza should be vaccinated to stop the transmission of polio.

The agreement reached between the UN health agency and "Israel" on limited pauses came as the polio outbreak in Gaza threatens "Israelis," too.